Happy Birthday Lucy!!!

Today is the anniversary of Lucy's adoption day, or her "birthday" as we call it at home. April 10th back in 2008 was a special day. I still remember walking out the door of the shelter and walking Lucy on her thin pink lease and pink collar and how she bounded out in front of me wildly. She was so full of energy and clearly had never walked on a leash. I knew that day, that this was the start of a special relationship.

Today, some 5 years later, I can't imagine a time when Lucy didn't share our home and lives. She's such an integral part of our routine and brings us so much joy. There are routines like the daily Lucy morning snuggle in which she jumps up on the bed, stretches out on me, sneezes in my face and tries to get me out of bed. She then herds me into the kitchen and does a little dance in front of the cupboard where her dog food is. On some days, she even spins around and does a little bark to ensure that we don't forget her breakfast. Only once or twice has she trick us into thinking the other one didn't feed her and she got two breakfasts.

Our walks twice a day are another part of our fun routine with Lucy. Well, most of the time, they are fun. This past winter there were a few rainy bitter cold days in which fun was the opposite of what I felt. But Lucy, freezing rain or hot sunshine outside, is always excited to go outside for her walk. Her excitement over walks, even in miserable weather, makes it at least feel worth it and fun.

Happy Birthday, dearest Lucy! We love you!

Flashlight in the Sky

The moon was so bright tonight, that Lucy and I both cast a shadow as we walked.

Lucy trys treats from Woofgang Bakery

A fellow dog-lover and friend gave Lucy a holiday treat -- a bag of cookies from the local Woofgang Bakery.

I gave her one cookie to try and wanted to video the opening of the bag and show how cute the baked doggie treats were. Lucy patiently waited for the first treat, but she gladly snagged the second one. Check it out:

Big Dog Spirit

Every morning, on our walk up the driveway, Lucy seems to not only find a stick, but the biggest stick in the yard.

This morning, the stick was so long that I'd call it more of a walking stick or cane. She looks so tough yet small as she wrestled with it and play growled. She truly has a big dog spirit in her little 25 pound frame.

Daily walk in Rhythm and seeing Tempo

Today, the song running through my head was by Mealoaf, "We were doubly blessed - we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed..."just that part while walking Lucy on her morning walk. Odd. Almost every morning now there is a song that pops into my head and stays with me the whole walk. Today, we saw Tempo on our morning walk. Tempo is the huge gray Great Dane puppy. He was jumping up and down and his human is a petite woman who probably weighs less than he does. He immediately did the play bow to Lucy. Lucy's tag was wagging a little, but her fur was also raised up a bit too. He's simply giant compared to 25 pound Lucy. She bared her teeth at him twice and I scolded her. "It's okay, Tempo needs to know that not every dog wants to play with him, " she said. I let them sniff each other again. Tempo is so tall, that Lucy can only sniff his mid calf! Funny. Tempo and Lucy then sniffed each other's noses and Tempo licked Lucy's face. I think it's a sign of affection and submission. If so, it's funny that such a large dog would be submissive to a tiny one. I guess Lucy is all personality and probably and alpha dog! Tempo is just adorable. I feel that he doesn't know how large he is. He really is the proverbial "bull in a china shop"

Cool dog related websites....

My first pick is DogSpired: http://dogspired.com/ You can share your stories there about dogs!!!!!!!!

Secondly, I found this nice site called DogTipper.com. It's a great community of dog lovers. They even have a section where you can list your dog blog too. Someone listed my blog there, which I appreciated. Here's the link to the dog blog directory there.

For my third choice: It's the one where Lucy has a little facebook like section...www.dogster.com. Here is Lucy's profile page there :-)

For German shepard lovers, found this link on Twitter - it's a blog about German shephards


And if you're like me - you love to write, you love dogs and you love to write about dogs, you might want to check out the Dog Writer's Association.

Happy Reading!

Saturday brisk walk with Lucy

Today, we took a good a small outing to a local park with a lovely lake.

I tried to keep the pace fast, but Lucy kept pulling me left and right and back and forward. The first few minutes made me regret driving out to the park and not just taking a long walk in our neighborhood, where she is less excited.

After a good 10 minutes of brisk walking and lots of quick tugs on the leash, Lucy finally fell in rhythm with me. Then I started to enjoy the crisp cold air and the sunlight beaming through the trees and sparkling off of the surface of the lake.

Lucy met lots of dogs too, about 6. There was an adorable small black Sharpee, a larger male Benji look-alike, a large pittbull & chocolate lab mix named Sebastien and a few others we walked by. The dog Sebastien immediately did the play bow to Lucy, whom he towered over. Lucy's tail kept wagging, but the longer they snifffed each other, the more the fur on her back slowly started to raise in excitement/tension. I gently pulled her away since once I see her fur raised, it usually leads to her getting unfriendly with the other dog.

All in all, it was a fun walk around the lake and park. To my surprise, she did "her business" though it was the middle of the afternoon. Thankfully, I had a small doggie bag stuffed in my purse for use.

I hope that it doesn't get too cold tonight for our evening walk. It's been terribly cold the past week at night.