Evening Walk with Baby Dog

Now that the evenings are about 15 degrees cooler than they were a few days ago, Baby Dog and I are taking longer walks in the evening. The other day we went over to the new pond. She still won't swim but at least she is occasionally getting her precious little paws wet, or maybe just damp.

Anyway, it was a nice evening, and she had a great time. I think she made every frog around the half mile circumference of the pond jump in. It was like one of those human waves at sporting events, only this was frogs. One after another they launched themselves into the pond just ahead of Baby Dog as she followed the edge of the pond. Most of the them were smaller frogs, this year's tadpoles. She didn't pay much attention to them.

As you can see, Baby Dog is no longer a true baby. She is now 11 months old, and still in that puppy adolescent stage where she is testing her limits (and pretending she doesn't hear me when she's looking right at me). Teenagers!

On this walk she was better behaved than average, though I know that won't last. Yet. That's what so frustrating about puppy adolescence. One time she's a little angel, listening to every word, obeying every command. The next time I walk her, she doesn't remember her name or hear my voice. To her it's all the same. She's a happy little thing, about 45 pounds or so, not as big as I thought she would get when she was just 8 weeks old. I cal her "little" because her back doesn't come to my knee. Dog is not only older but bigger at 65 lbs.


You can sort of tell in this last picture that her tongue is mostly black, well, blue really. I call her my border chow, since I think chow is her most dominant breed of the other 56 varieties that she probably has in her. The hair on her withers is long and when she's scared or angry it stands straight up and makes her look pretty fierce, which she isn't. She doesn't look much like a border collie, but that's about the size she is, and border collie is as good a guess as any, so that's what I call her, at least when I'm not calling her a goofball.