Reply to "What kind of dog do you have?"

Long ago, while in college, I had a malamute mix named Jake. He was very territorial, and would scale the six-foot high cinderblock "fence" we had that separated our house from the office complex behind us. I was dating DnVsMom at the time, and he was great with us and our friends, but not so good with strangers, so we got him a friend, a lab mix pound puppy we named Taylor.

So we had Jake and Taylor. If you have ever seen the movie Major League, you will understand.

Well, Jake got out one day, and cornered the mail man and wouldn't let him move. Never attacked him, just didn't like the fact that he was on our property, and cornered him. I eventually got home and the mail man had been cornered by Jake for well over an hour. I got an absolute earful from him about my dog who "attacked" him. The mail man, we can only assume, went to his superiors, filed a complaint and then we faced a lawsuit over our "aggressive dog" who never bit anybody, never bit another dog, who just didn't like the fact that a stranger was on his property. Being newly out of college, we didn't have the money to face a lawsuit from the USPS, and we had to find a new home for Jake. It was a very sad day for us.

Taylor, on the other hand, was the most loving dog and would lick to death anybody that she met. At the age of three, she started suffering grand mal seizures, that we had to medically treat. When we purchased our first house and moved, Taylor quickly met our mail lady, who was defensive about the dog at first meeting, but who came to actually seek Taylor out to give her treats. Taylor lived to the ripe old age of 13. Unfortunately she suffered a seizure that dislocated her hip, and with all the arthritis she had, the vet couldn't guarantee that she could fix Taylor's hip, and that we were facing a recurring problem. We hoped that DnV would get to grow up with Taylor, but it wasn't meant to be and we had to put her down.

Almost two years ago we got Lucy. Lou Seal O'Brien on her papers. O'Brien's Kennel is the breeder we got her from, and it also happens to be DnVsMom's maiden name. Lou Seal is in deference to the 2010 WORLD SERIES CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS mascot (whom DnV have always loved), and we shortened it to Lucy. She is finally starting to get out of that lab puppy stage, and I am thinking that I will finally be able to re-landscape our backyard.

Sorry for the length of the post, but our dogs have meant so much to us.