Why I Don't Have Nice Things

Graduation from Class No. 7

...and she still pulls on leash.  Le sigh grande....

First year check up today, and everyone at the vet hospital mentioned how happy they were that she's survived last summer and how she was worth all that debt. She is, but that doesn't mean I don't get cranky that she still pulls on leash.

Pups Swim!

Who Can Resist These Photos?

My Boys at the Playground

In Which I Am Over the Moon

Pupgirl and I have been volunteers with the Delta Society since she was two, and today we had to go for our fourth retest (Delta requires retesting of the dog and handler every two years, which is absolutely essential, I think, to a successful animal assisted activities team). She is quite the talkative girl, and I admit to being nervous every time we get retested. She barks during the test, and I'm always worried they will think she's barking excessively. She is the only Samoyed in our program, and the evaluator is not used to such a talkative dog. Every year we scored well, predictable. But this year we scored perfectly and were given a rating of complex!  Hooray!! I am so proud of her!! We could do actual physical therapy work with this rating, working one-on-one with a patient and a physical therapist, if we wanted to, which I don't. But I am so proud of us both with this score. Pupgirl and I are rejoicing!

I took her home after her test and went back to volunteer as a crowd person (I've been volunteering during testing for the past two or three years, and that probably helped our performance). The other volunteers admitted that they get nervous when they retest, too. But I doubt they feel the exquisite relief I feel right now. So here's my champion Pupgirl. She and I will visit at the hospital tomorrow (to take advantage of her freshly groomed glory, and she does look spectacular today--people were stopping us on our way in to and out of the test to admire and pet her).

Here she is three days before her ninth birthday last week.

In Which I Celebrate the Birth of Pupgirl

Nine years ago today, a dog named Star was recuperating from her overnight whelping of a litter of nine pups, 7 boys and 2 girls. The first born, right after midnight, was a girl, and she was named Red Dog. As she grew, she became, in the exact words of her breeder, "a stinker." That stinker became my stinker 11.5 weeks later.

Today is Kazia's (a.k.a. Promise's Sonora Desert Star) birthday, and as recently as Saturday someone said to me "She's 9?" Except for arthritis in her shoulders, you'd never know she was a senior girl as she still acts like a puppy, and I suspect always will. Her grandmother or great grandmother lived to be a pretty healthy 16, so I'm hoping she inherited those good genes.

I'll have to scan the photo I have hanging over my desk of her when she was just a pup so you can see how beautifully she's grown.

Happy Barkday, Kazimiera! May we have many, many more together!