My dog is the coolest dog in the world. Period. Someone once told me she loves me because I'm that one that feeds her. I don't care if that is the reason, she loves me. She loves everyone. She has a better attitude than any person I have ever met. She greets everyone with an open heart, she is ecstatic to see anyone...I mean anyone. I always joke if someone broke into my house she would probably load up in the car with them and be happy to see them....hey, I guess you can't knock her...she is pretty adaptive!
I have a golden retriever, who happened to be the cutest puppy in the world. I am sorry, but babies can't hold a candle to puppies. So here's how the story goes....It was a Sunday afternoon. I had no intention of getting a dog. I love dogs and always had one growing up, but never since I moved out of my parents' home. I stopped to get a drink at a gas station and there was a pen on a patch of grass at the side of the gas station filled with 7 golden retriever puppies. Of course, being a dog lover I had to go hold all the puppies. However, there was one puppy that looked scared to death in the corner of the pen, not moving a muscle. All 6 of the other puppies were simultaneously tearing up an old tennis shoe the breeder had put in the pen. An elderly man was standing talking to the breeder and nudged me and said, 'You oughta get that one! Look how calm she is!" ("That one" was the only one left in her litter of three. The breeder kept one and gave one to his friend because of her reddish color.) I laughed and said I couldn't get a dog right now and headed back to my car. I drove home and begin to think of that sad little puppy in the corner. Long story short, I turned my car around and wrote the man a check. I bought a full bred golden retriever and little did I know what I was getting myself into with my little gas station puppy.
I took her home and called her several names, before I decided on Lucy, because she had red hair like Lucille Ball. I sent her papers in so she would be official..."Mindy's Lucy Lou". "That one" now known as Lucy Lou hid under chairs the first week, looking adorable, before she decided to reek havoc on me and my house, before I realized she was nowhere near "calm". She never chewed on my shoes or furniture, but practically anything else...window sills, socks, blankets, anything she could get her teeth in. I soon discovered golden retrievers put everything in their mouths. I couldn't even pet her the first several months of her life, because she was constantly trying to swallow my hand. I took her to obedience school...what a joke and a waste of money! The main problem with Lucy is she was (and still is) obsessed with me. She wanted to be in my lap, which was cute when she was a puppy , but not so cute when she grew up. I couldn't step a foot without her underneath it. I looked like a battered wife most of the time with bruises all over me...my arms, legs, stomach, everywhere she could jump. People would say get a newspaper and swat her...ha! Lucy will undoubtedly rip the paper from your hands, tear it to shreds, and then eat the paper. (She loves eating all kinds of paper products: napkins, tissues, toilet paper, paper towels, and...newspapers) Then you would have the people that would say spank her, show her who's boss! Yeah, that doesn't work either, she would think you were playing a game and her obnoxious behavior would worsen. People said I was a softie. I wasn't being firm. Lucy, as a puppy, made me more mad than anything, more mad than Charter Communication! I mean anything! I wasn't hitting her like a "softie". She just didn't respond to any sort of punishment...until I purchased a shock collar. Two days with a shock collar on her neck and 75% of her behaviors disappeared! I would have paid $500 dollars for that sucker!
Fast forward to present day, is she still under foot...yes. As we speak she is sitting as close as she can get to my chair. I take her to the park and people ask me how I have trained her to not run away. I just look at them confused. Lucy would never leave my side...and she hasn't in over three years! I am reminded of a John Grogan quote,“Dogs are great. Bad dogs, if you can really call them that, are perhaps the greatest of them all.” I guess I got lucky to get one of the "bad ones" ;)
I read this passage in Jennifer Weiner's book Good in Bed several years ago and it couldn't be more true! Thought I would share:
I think every person who is single should have a dog. I think the government should step in and intervene: If you are not married or coupled up, whether you've been dumped or divorced or widowed or whatever, they should require you to proceed immediately to the pound nearest you and select an animal companion.
Thought I would share some pictures of Lucy Lou:
Proverbs 18:24 One who has unreliable friends soon comes to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.
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