Lilly had a full-blown panic attack during an outing Saturday night. It doesn’t happen as often as it used to, so it caught me a little off guard. Thankfully, the clouds rolled in, dropping the temperature a lot and making it safe to crate her in the car so that she could calm down. Looking back on the chain of events, I think I understand the triggers.
Lilly molested a man in public last Saturday. While shopping at our local farmer’s market, she gave a grandpa-dude quite a shock by kissing the backs of his bare knees as we walked by.
It’s been raining nearly all day, and Lilly is going mad. This is Colorado not the Pacific NW. When it rains, it’s usually just part-time thing. I’m going to bundle up one more time and see if I can get her to play. But, I can’t keep this up. C’mon sun!
There are no sissified city dogs at my house. We have rough and tumble mountain dogs around these parts. And, that means, they get into all sorts of really gross situations. So, come with me my friends, and let’s play as David Letterman would say, “fastest growing quiz sensation” … What’s THAT smell?
I forgot to include a photo with my earlier post. Here you go.
Being a full-time freelance writer means working from an internal stash of motivation and drive (and lots of chocolate) because there certainly isn’t anyone popping by my home office giving me pats on the back. In fact, most of the feedback I get from day to day, week to week, is about what needs improvement. That *is* editing, after all. So, it’s not like I’m the kind of gal who needs a lot of hand-holding. Yet, early in our agility career, derision felt like the norm in training. And, it wore me down.
The one and only time Lilly did the competition-sized teeter I nearly cried with joy. It was a fluke that’s yet to be repeated. So, months of endless frustration followed those brief moments of happiness. Here’s how it happened …
We don’t really know Lilly’s birthday, but the humane society guessed (based on her teeth) that she was about 5 months old when we adopted her in October 2004. Counting back, that means she probably was born sometime in May. Since we do know that our big boy Ginko was born May 13, we decided to make life easy.
I stopped mid-sentence with my fingers poised above the keyboard when several things registered in my mind at once. Ginko was sprinting toward the upper pasture. The thing he wanted to chase was Lilly. She was outside the fence, sprinting low and hard toward the road. And … there were cars coming.
Once I got Lilly out of the car at her first official obedience class, I had a hard time convincing her to get up off the ground. Once I got her off the ground, she didn’t want to go into the building. Once I got her in the building, she hid under my chair and bared her teeth (in fear) at anything that moved. She was about 9 months old, and things looked dismal.
