The Good and the Bad of Liliana

So now that Lily’s been here nearly a week and demonstrated that she’s more or less housebroken, she’s been given the run of the place. This is good and bad.

Good – Lily is a BIG dog. I know she doesn’t look that large, but she’s SOLID and has a tail more like a beaver’s than a dog’s. That appendage is strong and can hurt you or anything else in its path. Plus, it’s basically set on nonstop wag due to her happy heart. Now she can run full-out through the living room, up and down the stairs, before coming to a sliding stop on the wood floor in the kitchen. (She’s getting better traction since I took her over to visit Chuggy, and Jim trimmed her nails for me! Big shout out to Four Paws Pet Shop & Grooming – thanks a million! I’m terrified to trim nails so Jim and Rosie may regret the day they said to bring my fosters in for free nail trimmings!)

Bad – Lily is like an over-sized puppy. Fun, right? Ahuh, until she gets ahold of your slipper. She’s got adult size teeth with a puppy-sized urge to chew. Bad combination. So far, besides my slippers and my gloves, she’s destroyed pretty much every dog toy we’ve given her. At first, this was a good thing since we had accumulated WAY too many worn out dog toys and needed to get rid of a few anyway. But now we’re running out of toys. All, I’ve got to give her are old sneakers and tennis balls, which are totally uninteresting after a minute or two unless someone is flinging them for you – here’s Lily in action:

Good – Lily is a whiner when left alone. Now that she can continually check-in with everyone, she whines less. That is, until she realizes that no one wants to play.

Bad – Now Gracie has to deal with Lily full-time. Gracie is a grumpy, snarly, socially awkward dog who is about as tall as Lily, but 20 pounds lighter. What Lily wants more than anything is for Gracie to PLAY with her. C’mon, just one game of tear around the house? Ya wanna, Ya wanna, Ya wanna? Here’s what happens:

So this means that I have to supervise their interaction. Gracie doesn’t have a nice indoor voice, it always sounds like she is going to KILL Lily, even though, I know she’s all bluster. Lily has no idea that she could squash Gracie in a flash. Still, I can’t take a chance on that changing.

Good – because Lily is great company. She is warm and solid and sweet. She comes when she’s called and is always happy to see you.

So, the good is outweighing the bad at this point. Today the snow is falling and we are somewhere near two feet deep. Lily LOVES the snow. She leaps through it like a dolphin and keeps begging to go back out. I’ll leave you with another video of my sweet snow dolphin tearing it up….