RE: The best toy you can get your puppy is another puppy!
I so agree! Dogs are not meant to be solo, and as much as they love us, no one will ever be as good a playmate as another dog.
Marek found Lolo online, and we drove three hours to London, Kentucky to pick him up, from a very nice lady who ran a shelter who told us that his mom was a purebred Great Pyrenees, and that the owners thought that the sire was likely the handsome Saint Bernard-about-town.
The latter turned out to be untrue, as Lolo topped out at sixty pounds, about half what we were expecting, and he has serious wire hair across his face and body. So we're now thinking that dad was probably a Bearded Collie or similar breed, which is about the right size, and when we've checked out Bearded Collies online, they look like Lolo.
I'm hoping to get another Newfoundland, my personal favorite breed, having had two in the past. My first Newfy, Ebony, was my graduation present from my mom, having chosen the breed for their swimming and water rescue abilities, since as a marine biology major, I was planning to live on a boat.
Ebony was a show quality pedigreed pup that the owners had actually planned to keep for themselves, their pick of the last litter, but when we went to meet them to see their dogs' conformation, as they soon were expecting another litter, she picked me, and I her. She was a flatly amazing and gorgeous dog.
My next Newfy was a male mix, we think with Border Collie, that I adopted from a close friend of mine who had adopted him as a puppy. They were told that he was a five-month-old Springer Spaniel, but her vet said, no, this is a three-month-old Newfy. As an adult, he looked pure Newfy, and was a sweetheart as is usual with the breed, but he and their male Golden Retriever were developing serious dominance issues, hence the decision that he would be better off with me.
Lolo has had a few canine friends here, but they keep being sold or given a way, which is hard on him. He is friends with our cats, especially Bear, but needs a canine buddy who will be sticking around long term.
He LOVES to run all over our place, and although he's willing to hang out with me when I'm writing on the computer, it is clearly not his preference. He would much rather be outside being a dog.
Unless of course it is wet. I'm so used to dogs that LOVE the water, than when Lolo decided he wanted nothing to do with it except in his water bowl, it was pretty hilarious. He loves the snow, but he's a wuss in the rain. ;-)
Big dogs! Newfies and Pyrrhs - how I love them! Sadly, bigger breeds don't live as long. And our 6-ft 6-inch friend Garret just had to point out that one never sees men his size in nursing homes. Because big men, like big dogs, don't live as long as little people!
Life on a boat with a water rescue dog - gotta love your mom's thinking!
Please post pix sometime (if you haven't already)-
Love the story of the handsome St. Bernard, the culprit who turned out not to be responsible for your puppy, anyway. This kind of detail is the hallmark of great fiction. @mariannewest's #5minutefreewrite is a great place t launch these tales.
Thanks again for another epic reply, Cori!
Yeah, it's true the larger breeds don't live as long, but they've always been my favorites.
We have a gorgeous working collie named Miley a few properties south of us, on the opposite side of the street, and Lolo has a huge crush on her. And she flirts with him, so he's happy, though we don't walk down that way as often as he'd like.
And further down the road, just after the turn toward the highway and across the bridge over the Calfkiller, some new people have moved in, with a dog that I'd swear is mostly Newfy. He reminds us of our last dog, Sprinkles, a Landseer mix.
Calfkiller? For real? Your location alone is worthy of a novel!
And the pets tell us so much about their owners.
Lolo is a good boy, not heading off on his own to see his true love. Our collie, Prince, has to be under lock and key if there are construction workers or road crew in sight. He loves pretending to be their foreman. And stealing a glove or hat to keep smells as souvenirs.
Loll - my dad had a boxer named Prince who was our self-appointed guardian when we were little.
My mom would read stories to my sisters on the front lawn of their apartment, before I was born, and she usually "accumulated" a number of neighborhood kids in the process. Prince guarded them all.
He didn't care if someone walked by on the sidewalk, but if they set foot on the grass, he was on his feet on high alert. Needless to say, no one ever .messed with my mom or the kids.
My mom used to have pictures of Prince and me, sacked out on one of my mom's Navajo rugs, beneath my dad's Steinway. I'd love to have one now.
And yes, the Calfkiller River forms the eastern border of our property. When White County was first settled, around 1800, the local Cherokee chieftain was named Calfkiller, so the story goes that it was either named by or in honor of him.
Pretty, but quite cold, even in tbe summer, as it is spring fed from snow melt.
More great stories from Cori! The blockchain may preserve them all, but for someone like me, it'd take forever to track 'em all down. I do hope you anthologize this stuff. The local Cherokee chieftain named Calfkiller ... I just read "Blood Moon," a history of Cherokees in the U.S. since before the first Spaniards. I hadn't realized so many tribes started on the east coast and kept getting pushed westward, all the way to Oklahoma, which now has more tribes than any other state. That dust bowl, that "pen" for corraling people who got in the way of Manifest Destiny....
I am going to start pulling my posts and comments into a series of folders for future use.
So thanks for the suggestion, Carol, because you're right, it will make it a whole lot easier down the road.
Sounds like a book I need to read.
White County was named for John White, a Revolutionary War hero who was given a large land grant, and had the good sense to treat the Cherokee and Creek in the area with respect, so they cooperated with him.
They taught the settlers a lot about the local plants and food sources, which no doubt they regretted, once Andrew Jackson signed the order removing them all to Oklahoma.
My mother's father was born and raised in Ripley, Tennessee, just North of Memphis, so we actually have Tennessee roots. He told me a few years ago that the French and Irish ancestors on their dad's side intermarriage with the Cherokee and Creek, and one other tribe, in the way 1700s in the Carolinas.
Which might be why this place spoke to me so strongly from the start, because we are smack in the middle of what were Cherokee lands at the time. It's a gorgeous area, and we have no light pollution, so most nights we can clearly see the Milky Way.
Ugh, *intermarried. I despise autocorrect.
This totally belongs in a novel. Memoirs, I tend to avoid, no matter who wrote 'em, but fictionalize it, and I'm hooked. John Sedgwick makes "Blood Moon" read like fiction. Which can be troublesome, because he's in the POV of someone who didn't read or write, in the 19thC, describing the weather, inner monologues, dialogue - well, can take away from the authenticity of a history book, even though it's bringing dry, dead history to life. Anyway: you might like Laura Frantz, a descendant of Daniel Boone, and her novel "The Frontiersman's Daughter." - I love that one!
Links, comments on Blood Moon here - Just FYI! - no obligation to slog through a long review:
https://steemit.com/writing/@carolkean/blood-moon-by-john-sedgwick-keangrooview-21-march-2018
Funny, one of my grandmother's friends, when I was growing up, was Laura Geronimo, Geronimo's daughter. She was in her nineties at the time, but still had her wits about her, and was a wise woman in every way.
Places really can speak to us. Strongly. It's as if those who lived there before us do live on in spirit!
Indeed they can. That much I've known since childhood.
Calfkiller has spoken to me since we got here, long before I knew of him, or what little I know of his story, I kept seeing him mentally as a young man, sitting cross-legged with his eyes closed next to the spring in our cave by the river.
The funny thing is that, when I once asked his name, I literally got the mental image of a raised eyebrow, as if to say, "Do you really need to ask?" His home was along the banks of our river, and so our small cave would doubtless have been well known to him.
As for Lolo, he's pretty good about not venturing too far, though he regularly visits the neighbors bordering our place.
Awww! He has freedom to go visiting neighbors - sweet! Ours too can visit the adjoining property, the neighbors to the east, but everyone else is across a busy road. Now that both dogs have just passed age two, they're getting so much more calm, cool, and collected (until - SQUIRREL)
Lolo just turned five in February, so he has calmed down some, unless visitors! He adores our UPS guy and wants to climb up into his arms. ;-)
And yes, he lives to chase our rabbits, squirrels, deer and whomever else happens to take off running. Though he's made friends with the deer, so they only run out of courtesy to make him look good. They know he's no threat.
Our road is pretty lightly traveled, so few worries there, though we do have some locals who take it at a fast clip. But everyone around here is pet friendly.
LOL! The deer run only out of courtesy to keep Lolo looking good - hilarious - you need to write children's books! Funny how dogs universally hate the mailman but love the UPS man. All UPS drivers seem to have dog treats, so our dogs are all the more motivated to greet him. Prince marches right up the steps. One dog, the driver told me, slipped behind the sliding door, unseen, until he opened the door at his next stop - five miles away - and had to drive the dog back home.
Lol . . . I don't doubt it. I've joked before that if Lolo could ditch us for the UPS man, he'd at least think about it seriously.
Then again, we had a Keeshond named Dak when I was in high school, and he LOVED our mailman! In fact, he LOVED every man in uniform. Evidently, in his language, uniform meant friend.