Lily the Brave, Sorta

Our rescue dog, nearly three years old now and weighing sixty pounds, is mostly pit bull with some terrier thrown in. She is sweet-natured, intelligent, playful. She is also willful, having learned all basic commands that she follows. When it suits her.

Sometime people acquire pit bulls for the wrong reasons. You know what they are. We acquired Lily to give her a good home and to provide us with company. Every day, she makes us laugh at least once. Yet, despite the fact that is the most passive dog who has ever owned us, her breed carries that reputation.

Last night during a storm my long-suffering wife heard a banging just outside our bedroom window. "It's something alive," she said.

So I got dressed, picked up a flashlight, and went forth to confront the source of the banging. Since we live at the edge of the woods and at the base of a small mountain, a wide range of "alive" things could have been the source of the banging. Raccoon, fox, bear, and yeti all came to mind. So I asked Lily to join me as backup as we went out the back door and around the house in the wind and the rain and the dark.

I turned around once to see if Lily had my back in case I needed protection. She was not there. I called and she appeared, or least, her head appeared at the corner of the house, so I proceeded and found the source of the thumping. A small access door under the crawlspace was loose. I secured it and turned around. Lily was not to be seen.

But she was nearby. On the back porch, wagging her tail. Lily now has a middle name. It is "Liver."

Fifty Shades

We have a Fifty Shades of Yellow Tabby in our cottage. The Yellow Tabby is beaker, our male cat, who seems to have a few loose wires. His girlfriend is Lily, our pit bull/terrior mix puppy who is almost a year old. Fine so far? Just wait. When these two play, Lily grabs Beaker by the loose skin on the top of his head, or one of his ears, and drags him around. The first time this happened, I intervened only to find, to my amazement, that Beaker was purring. When I broke them up and held Lily by the collar, Beaker looked at me with a puzzled look on his face, as if to say, "Buzz off, we're playing." And made no attempt to escape.

So I released Lily and the whole bondage scenario played out again, with Lily the dominatrix and Beaker the client.

I am troubled about Beaker, who thoroughly enjoys this strange version of "play." I think he's nuts.

Currently, I am looking for a cat psychiatrist to delve into Beaker's psyche to see why he purrs when he's being dragged around by his ear, and why he makes no attempt to get away when I restrain Lily. Fifty Shades of Yellow Tabby, indeed.