A DOG FOR ALL SEASONS

"GETTING SOME LOVIN' - AND THAT LITTLE STINKER

GRACIE BETTER STAY BEHIND ME!"

(Edge of photo far right)

I'm always posting about Gracie - naughty Gracie chewing up Dan's feather pillow; silly Gracie, bringing in flower pots from outdoors, Gracie this, Gracie that. I thought I'd better give some equal time to my beautiful girl, Penny, our Golden Retriever. How do I love thee, Penny? Let me count the ways:

You are so beautiful, a beautiful reddish-brown color. Your coat is never snarled, except for a tendency to get little clumps of knotted hair behind your ears. But you patiently let me cut the clumps out. (But don't let anyone else - and that means the vet - mess with her ears.) I love your gorgeous white rump and under tail. This white coloration in Goldens is not favored by show judges, but who cares? Penny's not a show dog, she's a house dog! When Penny tears across the yard that white rump is waggling like crazy and that tail is whipping like a white surrender flag. (Although her tail is quite bedraggled right now, thanks to Gracie.)

Gracie Who? Gracie, that little monster who came to live in our house last November. Gracie, only seven weeks old at the time, has harassed Penny no end. She has chewed on her tail, her ears, her legs, her snout. Penny has exhibited the patience of Job, only snapping back at Gracie once in nine months. Dan and I tell Penny it is just retribution for the trials she caused our poor old Cocker Spaniel, Lady, when Penny was tiny.

Penny, you are so smart. You love the words, "Wanna go for a ride?" But you don't need the words. For the longest time you have known when I am going for a drive. You just needed to hear my keys jingle or see me put on my coat to be raring to go. But now, now, you don't need outward signals. You just . . . KNOW.

We have our special Saturday mornings. We leave that rowdy Gracie at home and we go do errands. We go early so the car won't be so hot. I roll down all the windows so she can stick her head out and let her ears flap. First, the post office, where dogs are not allowed. Boo! But then to the drive through at the bank. The minute she sees the money canister, she goes nuts. To her, that equates dog treats. However, she has a difficult time realizing that the cashier is going to send treats BACK with the canister. She's trying to devour the canister as I put my deposit in.

Then, if she's lucky, we go to Taco John's, where I have a breakfast burrito and Penny gets - more dog treats!

Sometimes Penny and I just press our heads together, forehead to forehead, her golden one and my going-gray one, and we "commune" with each other. It's all unspoken, but we understand each other very well.

I love our daily morning rituals. Dan and I have taken to leaving our clean laundry hung up in the laundry room downstairs. So every morning Penny grabs her ball, brushes past me (nearly tripping me) as I go downstairs to get an outfit. When I get to the foot of the steps, she is by the laundry area, ready to roll her ball to me. I grab it, throw it to her, then proceed to get my clothes. While I do that, she leaves her ball for me to pick it up once again. One more throw and it's time to go upstairs, Penny once again leading the way.

Penny is not a paragon of virtue. She isn't really fond of a lot of people outside my family, including the vet (see above). "Don't you bring her anywhere?" he asked me. "Well, no" was my feeble reply. She and her ball slime me at every opportunity, she muddies my clothes and -at 70 pounds - she gives me black and blue marks, once in the perfect shape of a paw. Bought for Dan as a Christmas present almost five years ago, she was meant to be a hunting dog. Let's just say - erm - she has a long way to go. But then, Dan's not a great dog trainer either.

Golden Retrievers are known by French-speaking people as "Le chien qui sourire," the dog who smiles. (Hope I got that right.) And certainly Penny fits that bill. And while I'm on my mini French kick, "J'embrasse mon chien sur la bouche." (I kiss my dog on the lips.) No apologies!

Penny Sue, Penny Lou, Penny Poodle Pup, Miss Pen-Pen, My Little (Big) Love Bug, The Most Beauti-Ussest Dog of All," I love you, doggie!

"YOU SEE WHAT I HAVE TO PUT UP WITH? LOOK AT

THOSE SHARP TEETH - AND SHE WAS TINY THEN!"

Did I mention Penny's ball? I do have to admit that when we first got Penny, I wanted to give her away. She was just so "needy." She either needed constant petting, or to constantly have the ball throw for her. I confess to having "disappeared" a few balls. However, getting Gracie has really taken away Penny's constant need for human attention.

And is she ever affectionate! When Kristen came home for Christmas last December, Penny, who hadn't seen Kristen for a whole year, remembered her immediately, and proceeded to lick her for 15 minutes. "Welcome back to the clan, Kristen," (Kiss, Kiss), "I missed you SO much!"

Penny loves winter. Plowing through the snow is great fun for her, if not me. I swear, she could lie down on a snowbank for hours and it wouldn't faze her. Yes, Penny is a dog for all seasons.

**********
"GIVING SOME LOVIN' TO KRISTEN!
(BUT MY YELLOW BALL IS NOT FAR AWAY!)"

THEY'RE BEAUTIFUL, BUT.....

Standing at the patio door this morning, I saw a single blue jay in my honeysuckle bush, sitting quietly and gazing contemplatively at the neighbor's yard.

This was interesting on two levels. First, I have never seen a blue jay in our yard until later in the season, perhaps July. And secondly, the jay was alone, and it was being quiet. We didn't have blue jays in northwestern North Dakota where I grew up, so I always thought I'd be thrilled to be around them. I was wrong.

Sure, I love their striking color, but they are always squabbling with each other. As I mentioned before, I usually don't see them until later in the summer, when a bunch of them swoop into the yard, start "arguing and scrapping" with each other, stick around for a while, then pack up and leave again. I call them "The Bickersons", after an old radio show in which the husband and wife engaged in relentless verbal war. My Bickersons are raucous and unpleasant and I'm happy to see them leave my yard.

Remembering an incident with the jays that happened a couple of summers ago, I now realize that my train of thought regarding these birds went off the tracks somewhere along the way. That summer, Penny, our Golden Retriever, actually caught a blue jay in her mouth. There was a pair of jays, obviously male and female, hovering and swooping low to the ground along with their fledgling. Penny moved in and, amazingly, snapped up one of the adults in mid-flight. I got the bird away from her and put it on the other side of the fence, out of her reach, but the jay had been too badly injured and eventually died.

I gave Penny a round scolding for killing such a beautiful bird. Then, Dan chastised me for scolding Penny. "She's just being a dog," he said. I had to agree. I remembered the story, "It's in my nature," from the movie "The Crying Game."

Anyway, back to my theory about the jays only arriving in our yard later in the season. That fledgling was obviously just learning to fly. It had to have hatched in a nest very close by, as it wouldn't have been able to travel any great distance. Therefore, those blue jays were in my yard all along. I don't know how I missed those flashes of blue, let alone the noise, but I must have.

Later this morning, when I walked to the back of my yard, I saw what my blue jay was looking at. My neighbor's lilacs are just about to burst into full bloom. It is surprising how just a few days of warm weather brings on the flowers. My own lilac bush is a bit behind, because it is shaded more.

Now that the weather is nicer, I leave my patio door open so the dogs can come and go as they please when I am home. I don't close the screen door because the dogs will go right through the screen. Therefore, Gracie has been bringing in a ton of "finds" from outdoors. Empty flower pots, pots full of damp soil, the water sprinkler, hose guides, rocks, and oh so many branches. When I told my daughter about this, she replied that it was natural for Gracie to bring things in since she is a retriever. Basically, Kristen was telling me, "It's in her nature." Actually, I told my daughter, Gracie is a German Short-Haired Pointer. A discussion ensued about whether or not pointers are also retrievers. I deferred to my husband, a long-time hunter, who says that yes, pointers are also retrievers.

I have also discovered, through researching the breed, that German Short-Hairs are escape artists, able to wriggle themselves out of tight situations. No matter how many times I put Gracie in the dog run, and how many ways I try to block the gate, she always manages to get out. Now she is called "Great Escape Gracie."

Today, the mailman came about 2:00. Knowing that Gracie has a penchant for eating mail, I ran to retrieve it (now who's the retriever?), but I was too late. Gracie grabbed two envelopes and dashed out the patio door. I had to chase her all over the yard before I got my letters back. Raucous blue jays. Bird-hunting dogs. Naughty puppies. I guess it's just "in their nature."