A Girl's Love for a Dog
Lucky was supposed to have been Matt's pet. If I were living alone, I would not have gotten a dog. It's not that I don't love dogs, it's just that it's been 12 years since I've lived with a dog, and in that time I've lived with and gotten used to cats and the rabbit. Rabbits are like cats except they shed less and chew carpet. They are low maintenance pets. You just have to feed them and clean up their poop (if you have an indoor cat/rabbit). They occasionally want attention but for the most part if you give them enough toys you can forget about them. On my visits to my parents house, in which they have two dogs, my attention is always half on the dogs. Either they want to be sitting in the chair with you or at your feet or they are begging for food or asking to be let outside or they are yapping at something passing by. As I told my Mom, "I don't know if I can ever have a dog again. They're so needy!"
So now we have Lucky. I wasn't wrong. She is a pretty needy pet. When I'm doing my resistance training, she is biting my hands or shoelaces. When I'm running on the treadmill, she is sitting right next to the treadmill, usually with a stuffed animal in her mouth and staring up at me dolefully (takes a lot of will power to ignore her). But now I remember how charming a dog's need is. This is why dog is man's best friend. It's fun coming home when a little ball of fur is jumping up and down in excitement to see you again.
I still think of Lucky as Matt's pet even though inevitably she has become my buddy. I say inevitably because I am home almost 24/7, while Matt works 12-13 hour days away from home. This means I'm the one giving her treats and playing with her.
Lucky is almost 7 months old, and she's losing a lot of her puppy-ness (which is both sad and very much a relief), so I wanted to record some of my memories of the past few months before I forget them:
* She races up the stairs so fast that she'll often stumble and lose her footing. I still remember her halting first venture down the stairs, and for some reason she made it down the stairs well before she worked up the courage to go up. Going down, she'd stare so intently at the next step down, I thought she'd burn a hole in the stairs.
* When she used to jump off of furniture, she'd fling her paws out in front of her like superman. Very cute. She looks more natural jumping off furniture now.
* As of now, she still loves digging at the walls of a box from the inside while I scratch at the box from the outside even though now she knows that the scratching sounds come from me.
* Her favorite box to dig at is a box that has a lid on it and is filled with shredded paper. Typically when she is in a wild mood, she will tear around the living room so fast that really all you can do is stand and watch, but one of my favorite memories of her was when she went wild and started running around in that box. All I could see was the box moving as she hit each side. Our little Tasmanian Devil.
* When she used to run, she'd be going too fast for her back legs to keep up, so they'd fly out to one side or another.
* We take walks daily, and often for an hour or more at a time. I'm trying to break her of her habit of chasing after cars, but she does like to sprint on an empty road. She also likes to sprint up hills. I try to keep up but often can't. I'll never forget one race up a hill where I was huffing and puffing and she pulled back alongside of me and looked up at me with what seemed like a giant smile. Her joy was my push to make it up the hill.
* I think one reason Lucky loves to chase cars is that she knows they carry people, and she's very much a people puppy. She seems to think people were put on this planet to love her.
* Getting bored of our neighborhood, last weekend I took Lucky to our local riverwalk, which was her version of heaven: lots of people, lots of places to dispel waste, and lots of smells. She immediately made friends with a boy about 4-5 yrs old who took the leash from me and walked with us as far as his mom would let him (and then cried when he had to part ways with us).