Wednesday Workshop: For the Love of a Puppy

It's that time again folks! My assignment from Mama Kat this week goes as follows:

"Tell us about your pet! If you have a weird infatuation with your dog or cat we want to hear about it (or if they just plain drive you crazy) But please don't compare them to children, it's just not the same."

5...4...3...2...1...

Back in September 2008, me, Marilyn, and Scarlett visited the local animal shelter as they were looking to adopt a kitten. I found myself wandering over to the puppies when I heard a high-pitched bark. My gaze traveled down and my eyes locked onto this tiny chocolate lab puppy. She nudged a nearby rubber pall to the edge of her pen then looked back up at me with her tail just waving away.

I would spend the next half hour playing with her. It was like playing with a chipmunk on speed. Then once she was napping on her side, tuckered out from all the excitement, I talked to the volunteer working about how much it would be to adopt her.

The next day, I came home with about 10 pounds of hyped-up puppy. Later that night, it would be Tinkerbell who suggested the name Faith for her.

While I had had dogs my entire life with the exception of when I lived in a dorm, this was the first time I had ever owned a dog that was inside a majority of the time. Paper training has been an ordeal but she's getting there even if there are still accidents on occasion. Like the one on the kitchen floor last night.

I've taught her to sit, stay, roll over, play dead, shake, and come to me.

And I've noticed in the months she's been here that Faith has developed a list of rather funny personality quirks.

Whenever she smells me cooking food, she will hop from the floor, to a chair to watch. The chair that oh so conveniently happens to face her food and water bowls. As if saying, 'when are you going to stop being a selfish bastard and feed the important one here?'

A phone ringing scares the hell out of her. I'm not even exaggerating. Normally I have my cell phone on vibrate as I don't feel like paying for a ringtone and I had the ones this phone came with. So when The Bait's rings or mine does, Faith will start to roll all over the place. If the phone is actually near her, she'll approach it, put a paw out, and then jump back like it's about to bite her on the nose.

In Faith's eyes, ANYTHING PURPLE MUST DIE. I had bought her two pillows for her bed/basket that were a deep purple colour right before Christmas. They were ripped to shreds before the week was out. I bought another of the same colour that met a similar fate. I think I've learned the lesson. No Purple. Ever.

Like most Labradors, Faith is very friendly. When she meets a new person she will follow this formula without fail. One, pace around the legs, sniffing and making little -yip- noises. Two, if they meet her approval she'll cozy up against them. Most people at this point reach down to pet her and as they do she will reach a paw up for them to shake while tilting her head. It's adorable.

On the other hand, she also seems to get a perverse sense of pleasure out of annoying The Bait. Things she has done off the top of my head include stealing his shoes, waking him up by licking inside his ear, decided that the mopped kitchen floor was a great slide and using it to slide-tackle him, and as he puts it "just being a nuisance". Despite how much he claims to dislike Faith and petition me to get her exorcised (not seriously), he does care about her as evidenced by the fact that he bought her a new pillow for her bed and a rubber penguin to play with. Said penguin has since been humped, wrestled with, and chewed six ways from Sunday.

Despite Faith having always loved Daybreak, as said child will feed her table scraps when she thinks me and her mom aren't looking, there was a period of time where Faith did not like Eva. Well maybe not so much as disliking her as her acting jealous. If me and Eva ever tried to kiss, Faith would rocket her little legs to nip that moment in the bud. She has since gotten over this issue thankfully.

My puppy is a weird little thing, at which I wonder whether she was always that way or if I just rubbed off on her. She may be exasperating at times but like pretty much every woman in my life has me totally wrapped around her finger...or paw in this case.

I learned that this puppy, who liked me upon sight, had been rather horribly abused by her previous owners. She was slowly recovering from malnourishment (and still is) and her left hind leg had been so injured that it limps. This is the same puppy who gave me the most sorrowful look when I left. The same puppy who barrels into my legs when I get home because she is so happy to see me walk through that door.

I don't regret giving her a home for a moment.