A sweet little lady.

I realized when I published the last post that the next one would mark the 300th blog entry. And since Daisy was featured in the 200th entry, it only made sense to have another all-Daisy post. Photos were taken by Mark immediately after she received her summer shave which occurred during "Clean the Slipcovers Day." As you can see, Daisy really enjoyed it.

It's hard to believe that Daisy is ten years old. That is, if you believe the Animal Rescue League. You see, Daisy was a shelter dog. When she was found, she was expecting puppies (The shelter believed that Daisy got herself "in the family way" during her first heat). After she had her own litter, she was foster-mom to two more litters of pups. To this day, Daisy loves to lay on her side and have her belly rubbed, probably because it reminds her of all those pups snuggled up against her.

We adopted Daisy at the end of August 2000. At the time, Samantha's (Or Sammie as she became known to us) owner hadn't relinquished custody to us. I suppose we were dog sitting "indefinitely." We had become super attached to her and were going to be very sad when and if her owner came back for her. So I suggested to Mark that we get a dog of our own to soften the blow.

One day on his way home from work, Mark had stopped at the Animal Rescue League and saw a dog that he thought might be nice. After dinner, we headed back there so I could check him out. At the time, when you walked into the dog room, the puppies were the front and center. As I went over to check them out, I saw out of the corner of my eye this dog jumping around in her cage, desperately trying to get my attention. I left the puppies to see why this crazy dog was carrying on so much. As I pet her through the cage, I read her bio:

Name: Samantha
Gender: Female
Breed: Shepherd Mix
Description: "A sweet little lady"



There was something about this dog. Maybe it was because she coincidentally shared the same name as the Border Collie that was staying with us. Maybe she was so happy to have someone pay her some attention. Maybe because she really seemed to be "a sweet little lady." After ten minutes or so had past, Mark came over to find me. I never did see the dog that we had came there to see because I didn't make it past the sweet little lady's cage. It was getting late, so we headed home.

Thus began "Operation Convince Mark that Sweet Little Lady is the Dog for Us." Mark was a little skeptical. He likes his dogs big. He's always wanted a Great Dane or a German Shepherd. Eventually he came around, and the very next day we went back to the Animal Rescue League to pick her up. When we arrived, she was in the middle of her cage curled up like a little brown donut. I'll never forget that.

Of course, we couldn't call her Samantha, because we already had one living with us. I came up with "Daisy," a name that, to this day, Mark says is not suited to her, because she's a little rough around the edges. Still, the name has stuck. And we really couldn't have picked a sweeter dog.



Perhaps for our 400th post, I'll tell the story about when Daisy at a whole bag of Sno-caps. How's that for sweet?