Raven can do this with her toy.
Pippin can do this with her tongue.
This is where Luigi put his biggest ball yesterday. Up on this table!
The wheels in Raven go ’round and ’round … ’round and ’round … ’round and ’round … the wheels in Raven go ’round and ’round … all day long!
This is what my knees look like these days.
Helen
Do you hear that? It’s the theme from Jaws.
Ladeda…deeedaaadeeelaaa…happy innocent Fort Doberdalians just singing and whistling a happy tune…ladeda…deeedaaadeeelaaa.
Wha…what…what’s that?
I know what I am.
Lemme show you.
I’m the visiting Professor. Dance is my specialty. Everybody, let’s do the Twist!
First you go this way…
Then you go that way…
I thought I was in shape till this! Breathe in, breathe out, in, out…
Good enough for today. See you tomorrow…
when we do the Watusi.
Helen
Well, Bouchard IS French, after all.
Go figure he would be the one to find and stretch out in this “crop circle” on the Fort Doberdale campus.
Helen
Today is Annie’s and my third year anniversary.
Three years ago, I drove for a little over three hours north to adopt this little character.
She is a beloved member of the Fort Doberdale Squirrel Posse, and dare I say, her I.Q. is higher than Raven’s shrieks.
When she first arrived on the FD campus, Annie loved Dove bars. She ate soap.
Another favorite activity of hers was pulling the toilet paper out from the roll and drawing it across the hall into the bedroom. She is very artistique.
That’s Ollie, above, looking at Annie’s artwork in silent disapproval. Ollie didn’t like the fact that he couldn’t control Annie and that she touched his toys. Pippin is looking our way with that “someone’s in trouble and it’s not me” look on her snoot.
Here is the toilet paper and my hairbrush, which Annie enjoyed swiping, chewing on, then using to brush her hair.
Here she is using my hairbrush as her own while touching one of Ollie’s toys.
Oliver used to stand guard at the bedroom door because he thought he could stop her. He didn’t appreciate her artistic flare or that she was on his planet. Now he’s afraid of her when she gives him what for on those days he oversteps his boundaries.
Annie was notorious for getting into the no-dog zone, and having no remorse.
Now, of course, she knows better and when she gets caught, has a way of looking like she’s remorseful, when she’s still really not.
In the beginning, Annie would jump up on my bed and nip my toes to wake me up in the morning. She’s not done that for a long time, and I miss that. I am cautiously optimistic that one day I will run across an Australian Shepherd who needs a new home and is on the Beta side of the dog ruling hierarchy. I would like to find one of Annie’s own kind to remind her who she is, an incredible herding breed with phenomenal instincts and smarts.
These days, Annie hunts lizards, rescues toys for Luigi, guards dinner (taste testing when she can get away with it), and is the numero uno doer-inner of varmints that have the unfortunate luck to run across her path. She can press levers to get treats, ring bells, crawl, speak, and learns whatver is asked of her at a phenomenally fast pace. She is one of a kind.
Happy anniversary, my sweet Annie B.
Helen
Last night, I was at my dog obedience club’s weekly practice. I’d recently enrolled Luigi in our Novice Handling class. Luigi is the epitome of what most people think of when they think *Dobermann*.
Before Luigi, I’d taken Baby to class for years. Baby is all natural. That means she has her tail and ears as-is from birth. Adorable!
So it was amazing to me that during last night’s class, it was the first time anyone has said to me they had a bad experience at a dog park because a Dobie had “taken down their dog.”
Luigi is a big lug and most times gets bossed around by the littlest girlie dogs in our household. He is even-tempered and when company comes over, he is the first to greet them with his ball for a good game of catch.
But when we lined up for sits and downs, I knew the woman next to us was telling me that from fear. It’s a darn shame. A shame the incident at the dog park happened. Mishaps between dogs often emerge from mis-management from their owners. I don’t trust dog parks for that very reason. I have seen people walk into a dog park with a dog that was too aggressive and unruly to be there in the first place. And in the second place, the owner has no responsible nature nor dog management skills to be there.
Once upon a time, when Baby and I did go to a local dog park, I got mauled by two jumping dogs. They wanted the Frisbee I had brought for Baby. Their people were trying to get control of them, but they ended up winning and scratched my leg so deep, the blood gushed out like the non-stop leak in my bathtub faucet, and it took huge amounts of paper towels to stop it so I could drive home. That didn’t stop us from going, though. What stopped us was the time Baby drank the contaminated water the park had to offer and when I came home from work the next day, she had thrown all over the entire house and thensome. That was a night in the emergency hospital I refuse to repeat. And that was what stopped our dog park days.
Helen