The dogs in my life: George & Indi

I am a cat person, mind you, but these days I seem to bounce between two dogs. 

Thirteen yrs old George is a lovely mutt of a terrier with the sweetest temperament. I guess having to live with a cat all his life helped. There has got to be something seriously wrong with you to stir Georgie's dislike. 

Georgie is really low-maintenance and superbly trained by his mother. He gets on with most dogs he runs into on walks (and there are tons of them in his neighborhood), most cats, and even the family of Western scrub jays that calls a bush in his backyard home. Like most dogs, George likes people food more than he does dry dog food, though he will settle for just licking the plate after you're done eating (and he won't sit there staring at you in the effort of guilting you into slipping him a bite in the process).

We go out for 2-4 walks a day when I visit... mostly from 1-5 city blocks. I'd trail behind the little guy and see if he wants to turn the corner or not. When it is hot out he usually turns all the corner and we're back inside the cool house after a block. When it is cooler out, though, old Georgie would keep pointing across the road when we get to an intersection. Sometimes I have to coax him into turning back if the road home contains an uphill climb. He isn't a big dog, but I walk with a cane so it is imperative that he can manage to get all the way back home on his own legs!

George's two favorite pastimes: a leisurely stroll where he can sniff almost whatever he wants and sitting by the screen door and people/dog/cat/bird/raccoon/skunk/whatever-else-that-live-around-here watch...

And this...

...is Indi, my present roommate's dog. We thought she was a Rottweiler, but a DNA lab processed her a while ago and decided that she is a mix of 4 breeds, none of which is a Rottweiler. A complete surprise to me is that one of the breed is the 'Chow Chow'... I dunno, Indi is prone to Rottweiler-worthy bouts of ferociousness when approached by strangers (or when someone not very familiar approaches the house)... And she produces a gallon or more of saliva when out on evening walks.

Come to think of it, Indi is really productive pooch in many different ways. The other day we were walking through a nearby park when she unloaded what seemed like half her body weight's worth of poop right on top of an unsuspecting mushroom, thereby rendering her own very fresh demonstration of the concept of forced-feeding.

If you feel bad for the mushroom, though, don't. That's another individual organism on earth that had been spared the horror of death by starvation...

Mind you, if Indi knows and likes you, you really won't find a more affectionate dog! The lass has a mind of her own, but she gets quite attached. She sleeps with her mom on the other side of the house. Gets up early and when I open my door in the morning she's be right there ready to jump her attempts to give me a pooch-approved face wash. One morning I was already up before Indi and her mom were, and was in the kitchen fixing my breakfast when my roommate opened her door and Indi rushed out straight for my side of the house, dove into the open bathroom (bunching up the bathroom carpet in the process), did a u-turn and bounded into my open bedroom before emerging perplexed at where the usual sleepyhead (me) had gone so early in the day. She spotted me soon enough, though, and couldn't quite understand what her mother and me were rolling-on-the-floor-laughing about...