Our Other Furbaby

This is Truffles "the Unphotographable Dog" killing her National Guard football! We call her "the Unphotographable" because it is so hard to get a good picture of a black dog, or any other black animal. My eyes can see shading and highlights in the black, but most of the time my camera can't.

Truffles came to us from a no-kill shelter. We had gone there to look at another dog that we found on Petfinder, but Truffles was recommended to us as better with children, and our son was then about two years old. She is said to be a "springer spaniel mix", and she has "chow spots" on her tongue.

She is indeed excellent with children. Even when my son came chasing after her with a plastic sword (which I put a stop to as soon as I saw him!), all she did was give a little disgusted "grr" as she got up and walked away.

She was a messed-up little goofball in other ways, however. When I went to cut her nails, her pupils got as big as they could, and she got as far away from me as she could. She looked like a crazy dog. When we had people over, she would bark her head off with her tail between her legs. I would cut one toenail at a time and give her a treat as I did it. So it took over a week to cut her nails, so what. When people came in the house, I told her, "Thank you! Enough."

She still doesn't enjoy having her nails trimmed, but I can often do a whole foot at a time before she says, "Gr," and pulls away. It's not a threatening growl-like "gr", just a little mutter-y "don't do that" noise. And her big brown eyes stay normal-looking.

And people! This dog has discovered that people are GREAT! They're great! She comes into a room with her feathery tail going around in happy circles like a helicopter, "smiling" (which really shows up, white teeth against that black fur), expecting that everybody is going to love and pet her.

I suspect it might have been her "submissive smile" that got her into trouble. When she meets new people, and wants to be friendly, she flashes her teeth: "Look, I'm smiling, I'm friendly." Very often people mistake this for "baring her teeth". Her teeth are bare, but her whole body language -- tail and whole body wagging, ears low and relaxed, happy eyes -- are saying "I'm friendly." She mostly does this with new people, or with people she doesn't see very often.

She is a huge contributer of "special fibers" to my knitting and tatting. Her undercoat is soft, light, silky, and very very thin. The hairs will literally float in the air and not land, they are so light. The worst is when I get one in a piece of tatting. Working a fine, thin black hair out of the knots of tatting is, shall we say, difficult. I have even gotten them in my eye, and those are really hard to get out!