• Health
• Money
• Leisure
• Make a Difference
• Family
• Online Community
• Membership

When Powder arrived at one day old Cheech was a little timid.

I bottle fed her and he sat by me and sniffed, trying to find out if she was a threat. If she moved quickly or made an unexpected move he would jump back. Finally I decided to let him get close enough to see for himself. I took her in and put her on the bed with him. After a long study he sniffed her butt and she peed. He cleaned it, and her,  up and I realized that I had a surrogate Momma here. From that point on we tended Powder together. He still thinks of her as “his puppy”.

“Theresa brought me home a little white ball on June 1st, 2003. She barely had hair and her eyes were still closed. We asked around. The consensus was that puppies open their eyes about day 9. Powder opened hers on June 9th… so it appears that she came to us on the day of her birth. She was a very big puppy. She has grown into a huge puppy. Folks around here say she is probably a Walker Hound, whatever that is. They say she will be as big as a Great Dane. She is white with daily increasing spots of soft liver (No, I am NOT changing her name!) and weighs now about 15 lbs at 7 ½ weeks.”

That was then.

This is now. Powder has canine ADD(Gemini). She has an attention span of about ½ second. She will scratch ferociously on the back door to come in… and in the time it takes me to get up and get there she has wandered off to smell something and cannot/will not even hear me calling her. She is terminally aloof and is not the least bit affectionate ever… unless Daddy just came home and he is out in the yard to play with her. If we ignore her… she will do bratty things like grouch at the other dogs who are getting the attention. She NEEDS love but is not capable of asking for it. She fits right into this family emotionally. Powder is owned and operated by her nose. Her sense of smell is acute and over rides any other information her brain is trying to collect.

Powder is so beautiful… that she does not need to be loving to be loved. She comes into the room and sits… and looks at you until you melt. Then YOU get up and go love on her. It’s beneath her dignity to come to you.

Cheech taught her how to be a dog and personality-wise so she’s a lot like him, but that’s nurture not nature. When anything unusual happens she looks to him to learn how she should respond… still. She chases squirrels because he wants her to. If she’s outside alone she will totally ignore a squirrel but if he’s out there she takes off like a bullet!

I wish everyone could see them run together. It is the most beautiful doggy ballet. I wish we had more property so they could really run. I’d bet they’d run a mile before they even started breathing heavy…and when they run flat out… they smile… like “Sammies”.