Daisy

About a year after we got Ernie, I was getting a haircut, and was about half done, when my haircutter stopped suddenly and said "Oh, I almost forgot!"  She ran out of the shop and came back in a couple of minutes with another lady.  She introduced this woman to me and they told me the woman was moving to Nevada the next day.  She had a little dog she'd had for 6 years, since she was a pup, and couldn't take her along.  Her new home didn't allow pets.  She said she'd tried everything she could think of to find her dog a home, to no avail.

I went next door to the office where the woman worked and saw this little white and gray/black dog with a black mask kind of cowering under a desk.   I, and the woman, coaxed her out and I petted her a little, but she was obviously nervous.   She was so cute though (the dog, not the woman) that I couldn't just leave her to go to the pound.  I said I'd take her and find her a good home.

Oh, I found her a good home all right.  She stole my heart like a thief in the night.   After about, oh, no time at all, I wanted to keep her.  Gracie and Ernie loved her.   They acted like, "Oh, look what he brought home.  Can we keep her?"

I took her in to our vet Rick, to get her shots and an exam, and to arrange to have her spayed.   When Rick came in the room, his face fell, and he said, "Oh, no, is this your dog?"  I said we'd just adopted her, wondering why he was visibly upset.

When we moved into our house the year before, we had a big housewarming party.   Rick and his family were among the guests.   His young daughters spent the whole time playing with Gracie, dressing her in blankets, etc. and just loved her.   Rick decided to find a dog like Gracie and in January 2002, found a litter of Aussie/Border Collies in Libby and adopted a female.   Later that year, in August, he had her at a Humane Society fundraiser and introduced us to Annie, who we agreed was a lot like Gracie.

This day, the reason Rick was upset was that it turned out his daughters were allergic to Annie and he was hoping we'd take her.  Of course, we would have, but we'd just adopted Daisy, and couldn't take two new dogs at the same time.   So Annie went elsewhere.

Daisy turned out to be a stressed out little dog.  Once she was attached to us, she developed a pretty severe separation anxiety, and we had a pretty long stretch of her piddling on the carpet.   She also didn't ever want to leave the house.  When we'd take her somewhere, she didn't want to walk, so we'd have to carry her.   While she's short, she's really not a small dog, weighing around 40 pounds.  We didn't know it at the time, but I"ve come to believe that she is all or mostly Havanese, and is at the extreme outside of their weight range and size range according to the AKC standard.

As she's matured, she became the household manager.  She, more than any other dog, is microscopically aware of every nuance of routine, and gets quite upset and very vocal when we depart even the smallest bit from routine.  She'll come and bark at me to let me know that Ernie needs to go out, when she doesn't have to at all.  She's really sweet, but assertive.   She has a loud sharp bark that can pierce right through you.  But I'm just complete mush around her.

We bought a motorhome in 2007, 5 years after we got her.  To our surprise, she loves the motorhome.   She's happy just to go out and sit in it.  She's ecstatic when we travel in it.   Thanksgiving 2007 we took the motorhome to the Oregon beach for a week.  This little dog who HATED to go out in the yard for the first few years we had her, suddenly LOVED walking in the sand on the beach.  She's become our most adventurous dog, always up for traveling somewhere new.

She has pink skin under her white fur, and loves to play a game where I grab at her muzzle and she makes this sort of snorting sound.  We call her the "piggy dog."

She doesn't seem like it, but she's about 13 now, same age as Ernie, who also doesn't seem that old.  Thankfully, Havanese tend to live fairly long lives, and Ernie seems to not have the early aging tendency of his Lab side.   We hope they'll both be around for quite a while more, as we love them both dearly.