My Glamour girl is a handful, make no mistake. There were days when even I didn't feel up to visiting her knowing that I'd have to keep her from jumping and the first 5 minutes or so of the walk will be an exercise in pulling. Because of that, sometimes her walks were shorter than they should be but on the other hand when things are going well, her walks were longer than many of the others.
Lately, though, I see her getting "small" when she comes to the kennel door and when I enter, she knows to go to her bed and sit or I won't put her collar on her. Once the collar is on, there's a fair amount of twirly-whirls which often involve a bounce or two off the wall. She has spirit!
Our shelter usually doesn't have dogs in house very long. Adoption rates are really good, so when a dog is there for over a month or more they usually get to become office dogs to help break up the monotony and keep up the socialization. Glamour got a turn in one of the offices until she learned to jump the cubicle walls and ended up back in a kennel. This week, due to some great adoption numbers, she finds herself in the front office area for awhile just as I am able to furlough her for a few evenings for even more of a break.
On the first particular evening, the stars aligned so that only Asia and I (and Ray) were home, so we orchestrated a little crate and rotate until we discovered that Glamour's surname is probably Houdini. Yep, she
They had met, so we decided to take them out on leashes and see if they were socially inclined. It was completely outside the original game plan of Glamour and Ray not meeting, but it actually turned out well. Really well. All twenty-five pounds of muscle gal, matched up really well with my Big'un and for short little bursts they played, they bowed, and had a great time. My pride in both of them knew no bounds.
Because we wanted to keep it on a very positive note, they only played for two very short sessions before I took Glamour back out the gate and around to the front, up the stairs and into her temporary abode.
Before darkness fell, I found Ray's old harness and Glamour and I went out for a nice long bedtime walk where she explored nature, did her nightly toilette and got nicely tired out before retiring with a drink of water and some soothing classical music.
Everyone settled in nicely for the evening and when that rude alarm sounded, I slipped out of bed, showered and woke Glamour from a sound sleep. She unfurled herself from the nest of thick comforters and we headed down the stairs and out the back door for her morning relief. She spent a few leisurely minutes reexploring the back yard off leash and then wiggled back to me for some pets. We sat by the pool and I rubbed her back and shoulders while she really seemed to be appreciative of her reprieve from the kennels. She was so relaxed and calm and just .... peaceabull.
