Fridays Are Golden

Our Lucy had a birthday last week.  July 4th to be exact.  And now she is seven years old.  Lucy is the smartest dog we have ever had.  Far from being mellow like Ellie, Lucy has the temperament of a show dog. She is very loving and while she is not particularly interested in pleasing you, she is devastated when she is scolded.

Lucy was much more difficult to train in common commands than any dog we have ever had.  I might have mentioned before that she had a dozen questions about every single command.  We first noticed that with one of the first commands, "sit."  Some of her questions were, "why?  where?  for how long?  can I wag my tail while I'm sitting?"  She needed special training to believe that a command given inside the house applied equally outside the house in other situations.  It took forever for her to finally learn the command, "down."  In our training, when the command is given and the dog is first learning, the owner places a hand on the dog and gently puts her in the down position.  Unfortunately, Lucy thought this was a fun command.  "OK, they say 'down' and then they push me to the floor.  Yeah!  That's fun!"  The command became so corrupt that we left it for a while and then re-trained her using another word.  Lucy knows all the commands and she also knows that she will be corrected if she fails them, but every now and then she just HAS to give it a try.  She will try to go out the door before the master tells her.  Sometimes she will move forward and pull on the lead rather than walking by the master's side.  She knows she will not get away with it, but something within her just makes her have to try.

She was our first dog to get carsick on a regular basis.  I made it a habit of taking her for short drives around the neighborhood, plastic bag and paper towels at the ready.  Slowly she became more and more tolerant of riding in the car and by the time she was six months old, she no longer had a problem.  She continues to have a "delicate" digestive system which we attribute to the fact that she picks up almost anything along the way.  We have to check her mouth every time we bring her in and often find acorns, little sticks, or even pebbles.

Lucy has always smiled a lot, even on her first day home.

Whereas Ellie loves tennis balls, Lucy loved very large hard balls.

She was so funny pushing this ball and falling all over it.

She always loved to play with Ellie.  And she still does.

Here she is several months old.  She still has the "puppy" sit.

And this is the grown up Lucy.

She looks smaller and leaner than fluffy Ellie, but they are within a pound or two of the same weight.

We asked for relief from the heat and we definitely got it.  On the down side, the cooler air brought heavy rains.  We are going through dog towels rather quickly as we walk in the rain.  There is flash flooding nearby and the parched fields are now standing in water.  Thank goodness we have a large den with heavy furniture where the dogs can romp and play a bit.

It seems that more and more people are angry much of the time.  I may have used this quote before, but if so it bears repeating.  From The Buddha:

"Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal intent on throwing it at someone else;  you are the one who gets burned."

HAVE A WONDERFUL AND SAFE WEEKEND, EVERYONE!!!