Part I:
This blog will cover the ongoing life story of the dog Lilly. A rescue from the Placer County (CA) SPCA, this little bundle of destruction....I mean joy....landed in our laps on Monday, November 27th 2007. Marilyn and I had just finished a nice relaxing Thanksgiving weekend in Santa Barbara, when an email from the SPCA showed up in Marilyn's Inbox on Monday Nov. 26. It said they had a golden retriever-yellow lab mix, female, about 5 months old that needed a home. She came with impeccable credentials; crate trained, housetrained, smart, very well socialized with people and other dogs. We immediately went to see her that Monday, and played some fetch and got to know each other. She was so sweet, obviously intelligent, and really wanted to please. Marilyn and I looked at each other and knew we had hit the jackpot. We said we would take her. They asked if we could take her home right then.
Woah! Oh geez, we weren't not ready for this! Neither house was puppy-proofed, we didn't have any crates for her to sleep in, etc. etc. Do we have dog bowls? Food? We needed to buy a little time and go on a big shopping spree at PetSmart. We decided to pick her up the following day, Tuesday. That's when the adventure with this little doggie would begin.
Lilly is the replacement for Marilyn's dearly departed Lucy. Lucy was a golden retriever that Marilyn rescued through Homeward Bound Golden Retriever rescue and sanctuary in Roseville, CA. Lucy was trained as a search and rescue dog, but ended up being a little too 'freeminded' to make the final cut. Their loss, Marilyn's gain. She had Lucy for 13 wonderful years, and finally the old girl's body failed her in April of 2007. We sent her to go run and play in doggie heaven, and took some time to heal from the loss.
We took Lilly to Marilyn's house on Nov. 27, 2007. She looked awfully nervous on the ride home, with two relative strangers and an unknown destination. We also realized that her last ride in a car wasn't the best experience of her life, as that was the ride that saw her first family go away and she stayed at the SPCA. We got her home, let her sniff around in every room and the backyard, and she began to get comfortable. Some pictures from that first day:
As can be seen from the pictures above, there were periods of playfulness, exhaustion, and finally relaxation that first day. We figured, "what a sweet, wonderful little dog. An absolute angel. She is going to be just perfect"
We couldn't really figure out why the folks at the SPCA kept telling us that she was a handful, she seemed perfectly well behaved to us. Perhaps we should have looked a little closer at the picture below....which seems to reveal a glimpse of the colossal amount of mischief underneath the surface of this doggie's "sweet" personality....
Coming up in part II:
Everyone settles into their new routines, Lilly goes on her first walks, and why does this dog puke so much?
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