The first time David pulled out his banjo and played a tune on it, Dahlia rushed out of the room and hid in the bedroom.  This is, of course, the reaction any sane being might have to a banjo being played.  But as neither David, nor I, are completely sane and as we both love the sound of the banjo, this was somewhat worrying.

She had never been exposed to such a noise before and she wasn't sure what to make of it.  I watched as she carefully stuck her neck out and around the corner, nose active, ears back, a clear look of what did I get myself into? written all over her face.

David put the banjo away.

Dahlia came back into the room.

David and I were heartbroken.  Our new dog, so wonderful in so many ways, was afraid of the music.

He later tried the fiddle with much the same reaction.  She didn't run as far this time, but she did step away from the sound and peer carefully back at it.  Is it going to harm me?  What is that thing?  Obviously her "people" before us were not musicians.

A couple weeks later we had company over to our little cottage on the lake and, as we all like Sunday morning folk-outs (or in this case, Sunday afternoon folk-outs), David pulled out his octave mandolin and played some tunes on it.

Dahlia carefully strode away and sat just inside the door to the bedroom.  Still cautious, she stared at David with a curious look, head cocked slightly to the side.  David continued to play.  I watched Dahlia.

When David left to go check on the grill, he set his octave mandolin carefully down on the couch.  Dahlia, of course, followed David out to the kitchen.  After all, there might be yummy things there that have her name on it.   David, in good "daddy" form, pulled out a biscuit, asked her to sit, and handed it to her.  She carefully took it in her mouth and rushed back into the living room.

Usually at this point, she would head over to her bed to eat it.  But not this time.  This time she paused inside the room and moved toward the couch where the octave mandolin was laying.  She carefully set the biscuit down in front of the instrument, touched her nose to it, and retreated to her bed where she lay down with a sigh.

Was this a peace offering?  An acknowledgment that if she were to share her abode with these strange instruments, a truce should be called?

The biscuit remained in front of the mandolin for much of the evening and we all marveled over the musical offering.

Of course, later in the evening Dahlia retrieved her biscuit.  You could almost imagine her saying, "Well, if you don't want it, I'll eat it."

She has never had a problem with any of the instruments since that moment.  I think, though, that she has a particular affinity for that octave mandolin.  When David pulls it out to play, she comes to rest on the couch next to him, watching, and listening intently to the melodious sounds of the instrument.

I hear people talk, quite frequently, about how their dog wakes them up in the middle of the night or early in the morning.  I can't count the number of times my mother has complained of their dog, a curly-haired white little mutt named Teri, awakening her at 4:00am in the morning to go out.  So when I got a dog of my own, I expected to have a snout in my face early in the morning.

This, however, is not exactly what happened with our Dahlia.

A couple months ago, my routine looked a little something like this:

6:00am: I get up.  Some days I get up at 5:00am and this all starts an hour early.  I either take my shower or wash up and then wake up by checking e-mail.

6:30am: By this time I am sufficiently awake enough to get my butt off the chair.  I get myself all bundled up and then go to get the dog.  "Dahlia!" I say in a whisper. She eyes me balefully.  "Do you want to go for a walk?"  This is the point at which a dog is supposed to jump up with a big grin that says Of course I do mom!!  Dahlia rolls over, stretches out her legs, and rests a paw against my chest.  I rub her belly and then stand up.  "Come on Dahlia!  Let's go for a walk."  This is louder than before because I'm pretty sure she didn''t actually hear me the first time.  She can't have.  After all, aren't all dogs are raring to go when their person mentions the much-heralded walk?  I think dogs on the dognet are always blogging about the wonderful things they smell on walks (Today there was...CAT SHIT!!).  By this point, David is waking up due to all the noise and production.  He joins in the excitement.  Dahlia eyes him and rolls over.  Now there are two humans to pet her belly.

This is clearly not working.

David gets out of bed and joins me in my efforts to get her out of bed and moving.  She finally decides to get up and follow me out to the living room.  Once out there and near the leash and the door, she suddenly shows the excitement that had been missing before.

6:45am: We head out on our walk.  What had been planned to be a half hour is now shortened to only 15 minutes.   Luckily, David is home because he takes her out for a longer walk later in the day.


About a month ago I found a work-around for this.  At 6:30am, I bundle up and head into the kitchen.  I open up the refrigerator and grab the packages of Fresh Pet sausages.  I crinkle it loudly as I pull out a sausage.  When I turn around, what should my eyes fall upon but dear Dahlia, tail enthusiastically wagging, mouth open in anticipation of that lovely sausage.

Yes.  My dog is a food hound.  And this has been what my morning routine has become.

But this morning, miracle of miracles, I was getting my boots on around 5:40am and looked up to see that Dahlia had crept in (she's almost silent when she doesn't have her collar on) and was quietly sitting across the room watching me.  When she sees that I've noticed her, her tail starts to wag and she stands, moving closer.  Mom, are we going for a walk? her body language is screaming at me.  I scratch behind her ears, rub along her sides as she leans into me.

"Dahlia...tell me something...do you want to go for a walk?"

And we're off for our jaunt to the great outdoors.  I don't believe for a moment that her new routine will consist of her rising from bed when I do.  But one can hope.

Tonight Dahlia wandered into David's study.  David turned to me and said "She keeps going in there looking for something."  And then Dahlia came out of the room with something in her mouth. 

David said, "Oh she hid one of her things in there."

I said, "Uh oh."

As she headed away from us, I noticed that the thing in her mouth was a sort of yellowish-white colour.

And misshapen. 

She came around into the dining room and laid, right there in front of me, the same freaking thing of butter that she had yesterday.

David said, "How did she get that? I put it on the kitchen counter."

Yes.  He put it on the kitchen counter.  Then went out for a couple hours.  And while she had the house to herself, she somehow got the butter down off the kitchen counter and hid it in David's study.

Clearly she was better at hiding it last night than she was yesterday's afternoon as we never found it until she brought it out to us.

The butter is now in the trash...where it belongs.



Dahlia says "Awww, Mom...I thought you left it out just for me!!"  Really, how can one be angry at that face?  It's just simply not possible, especially when her buttery ways are all our own fault.

Yesterday David had to leave Dahlia alone for a couple hours while he went out to a meeting.  As is typical for us, everything that a dog might be interested in was not put away beforehand.  We're still getting used to having a dog around and for the first few months we had Miss Dahlia, she was an utter angel and didn't get into anything. 

When David arrived home after his meeting, he found a very happy Dahlia and the bread that had been on the table on the ground.  It was still in the plastic bag I had put it in.  All was well and good then as Dahlia hadn't eaten a bit of it.

Except...

All was indeed not well and good.

I arrived home around 4:30pm, also to a very happy Dahlia.  After spending some time playing with her, David and I decided to go out for a little walk with our girl.  I plucked up my boots, coat, hat, and other paraphernalia needed in order to go for a walk in these frigid temperatures. 

I went to sit down on my recliner in order to put said paraphernalia on.  And what do I see sitting there, tucked partially into the crack between the seat and the arm of the chair?  That's right...a partially chewed up stick of BUTTER.

And then it became clear to me.

The bread was simply in the way.  The butter was what she was after.  She got that, chewed on it, and then hid it in my chair.  Well, she sort of hid it.  She's not very good at hiding her things.  They're usually sitting in plain view, but clearly supposed to be hidden from our eyes. When it's one of her things (a bone, a large biscuit, etc.) we just pretend we can't see it and go about our way.  Since this was indeed not one of her biscuits, it had to be removed and subsequently thrown away.

Now mind you, this is not the first incident of butter hiding our little girl has done.  This fall we found a stick of it, again partially chewed up, in the bottom of David's closet.  At varying other times, she has plucked the butter wrapper off the table and licked it clean.  Another time she took the cardboard container (sans any butter in it) from our recycle bin and nonchalantly walked past the table with it as we ate.  And perhaps best of all?  The day we got her she ate almost an entire stick of butter at the foster home.  She climbed up on the table and her foster mom found her there finishing it off.  Yes, this had an adverse affect on her digestion.  We spent much of the trip home with her with the windows down as our lovely new dog farted up a storm in the backseat.  What an introduction!

Our dog, it would seem, is obsessed with butter.

We've now had Dahlia for nearly two months.  On one hand, it's hard to believe that it's been that long already.  And on the other hand, it's hard to believe she hasn't been in our lives all this time!

She's adjusted very well -- while she still doesn't know us as "mommy" and "daddy," she does recognize that we're her people.  When we come home, she's so excited to see us and wiggles while sitting and giving us "the paw."  This is something endearingly unique to this dog and probably what ultimately saved her life at the Ohio shelter.  She will give you her paw...just because...and generally hooks it over your arm while you're petting her chest.  Sometimes she'll give you "the double paw" -- she puts one against your leg, leans back so she's sitting on her haunches, and then puts the other on your other leg.  She's not jumping on you -- just leaning against you.  It's very sweet.

In the past couple months we've seen her personality come out more and more.  The rescue said she had no Border Collie traits, but we've found out that when she gets excited on walks, she'll start to herd you.  The rescue also said she wouldn't go near water, but so far she's gone in up to her chest and splashed around a bit.  No swimming yet, but maybe we might convince her to try at some point.  She's starting to play some more -- likes to roll onto her back and flail her legs around while mouthing at your hands with a silly grin on her face and she's begun to learn a little bit about fetch.  She's proven to be good with dogs (we take her to the dog park frequently), great with kids (last weekend she met David's nephews and nieces and was wonderful with them), and very people-loving.  She goes up to people, calmly, and just waits for them to pet her.  She's very sweet.

We have her in obedience classes and even though people there have asked why we have her there (since she's pretty well-behaved), we felt we really need to teach her more commands and hopefully figure out how to overcome some of her stubbornness (she likes to lay down and sniff if you try to pull her away) and her overly excited reaction to other dogs when she's on the leash (she PULLS to get to them, sometimes barks).

David and I couldn't be happier with her.

David and I got a dog. Her name is Dahlia and she's coming home to live with us in a couple of weeks.  She's a 3-year-old lab/border collie or flat-coated retriever mix of some sort.  She weighs 46lbs and has a medium-length coat.  She's mellow, kind, doesn't have any bad behaviours that the foster has noted (no chewing, barking excessively, separation anxiety...house trained, crate trained, leash trained).

I was supposed to do two transports the weekend of April 19-20.  I found out at the last minute that they didn't need me for one of them.  And then the other got switched to a day and time I couldn't do it.  I had been contacted for a transport for a BBD (Big black dog) and told them I couldn't do it.  At the last minute, I wrote to them and stepped in to save someone from driving 164 miles both ways.  In doing so, I met Dahlia (who really is more of a MEDIUM black dog than big!).  I totally fell in love with her and told her I was going to try to bring her home.  And how we are!!

I'm currently uploading a bunch of pictures of her in a new folder, so go check her out!  She's so pretty.

I've created a new blog about my dog transports, for anyone interested in reading about them.  You can find it at: http://dogtransports.blogspot.com/.

Included will be descriptions of my transports, pictures (and who doesn't love dog pictures?), and some other information on animal rescue.  Please bop on over and read if you're interested!

My latest endeavour is something that is very important to me. I've always loved dogs, ever since I was a kid.  I grew up with dogs and as I get older, they mean more and more to me.

Recently, I found out about rescue transports.  Kind people from all over the USA will volunteer to take one leg of a longer trip (usually about an hour to 1 1/2 hours) and take the animals on to the next person, who then takes them on to the next person.  These dogs (and cats!) are mostly pulled out of "kill" shelters and then trasnported to rescue associations, foster homes, and "forever" homes.  Occasionally, they're taken from one rescue to another for various reasons (usually involving the possibility for adoption) or from a foster home to another foster home or a rescue.

I started doing this on January 13, 2008 and I've already done three transports.  Each animal is special and I get to spend a little time with them before passing them on.  Already, some have touched my heart and I haven't wanted to let them go.

I put up all my pictures from the transports here for anyone who is interested.

If anyone is interested in doing this, please feel free to contact me and I'll pass along the information on how to get started!