Allie is Part WHAT?

So Ferocious

Sweet Allie.  She’s so, so sweet.  She’s pretty and affectionate and athletic and she loves me to the moon and back and the others too.  The thing is, she’s confused.  She has no idea what she is or what she’s capable of doing.  She knows she’s a dog, or she wouldn’t constantly be barking.  This is where the problem is.

When we got Allie from the rescue we were told she was lab and beagle.  We accepted their description but looked at each other knowingly.  This was no beagle mix.  She was most definitely half lab.  The other half, confirmed two days later by the vet, is pit bull.  He told us in the office, “Don’t let that concern you.  Lab/pit is a really good mix.”  Really lab and anything is.  From the lab we have been blessed with the sweet disposition, the devotion and the pounds and pounds of hair that I vacuum up each week.  It’s insane how much hair this dog loses in a week.  From the pit we got her smile that shows off the pit bull jaw.  She’s also a bit more muscular through the haunches and not as tall as an average lab.

Allie has no idea she’s half ferocious.  Half deadly.  Half of the most beautiful and frightening dog ever bred to kill.  Half of what’s mostly found in the Camarillo animal shelter.  She doesn’t know she has the ability to open her mouth and clamp her jaw on pretty much anything, and enough strength to hold it there indefinitely.

Allie is afraid of the plastic bags from the grocery store.  Shake one at her and she’ll run up the stairs.  She’s afraid of tin-foil and bubble wrap – TERRIFYING!  We were once running down the street and the wind blew an empty gallon milk jug in our path.  Allie reared back, begging to go in the opposite direction.  When Hot Joe tells us about something that annoyed him at work, with his deep voice, Allie will run upstairs to my office and hide under my desk.  When Noah gets mouthy with us Allie runs upstairs and hides under the desk.  Oddly enough, or maybe not so odd considering I am her EVERYTHING, nothing I do scares Allie.  If I go to bed at 7:30 because my doctor prescribed a pill that is too strong and I can’t handle sitting up straight, Allie will follow, curling herself up into her bed on the floor directly below me.  If I go to the bathroom I will open the door to find her staring up at me.  When I wake up every morning at 5 a.m., she follows within minutes from wherever she was sleeping, nudging me on the leg to tell me she’s here, waiting for my pets and my, “You’re so pretty.  You’re such a good girl.  You’re mommy’s girl, aren’t you?” and then she will curl up on the blankets behind my desk waiting for Daddy to wake up and offer treats.

When we runstreak and Allie barks at other dogs, she is responding to them.  She wants to smell them and play with them and see what they are all about.  If they don’t bark, neither will she.  I know, we need the Dog Whisperer.  It’s just, I don’t think I film well.

Let me tell you when Allie becomes ferocious.  When it’s windy outside.  She will bark the hell out of that wind.  When she hears the UPS truck stop.  Lately it’s often for me (Yay Scentsy!!) and I bring the dogs in at that point but she will bark every single time.  Nothing.  Sometimes she simply barks at nothing.  I know it’s nothing because Luke stares at her instead of chiming in, which he is always oh so happy to do.

You know what else makes Allie bark?  Today we were in the car waiting for our boy to get out of school and the special education teacher walked by followed shortly by a disabled boy.  He had the kind of walker that is pulled rather than pushed and one leg was mostly being dragged.  Neither of his eyes opened very well and his face had a sliding appearance to one side of it.  The teacher saw the pups and pointed in the car, saying, “Look at the doggies!  Aren’t they cute?”  When the boy looked in the car as he passed, Allie barked at him.

Allie becomes a pit pull with wind, the UPS truck, random nothingness and disabled boys.  The cat often bites her ear and she doesn’t even twitch. 

Does the Dog Whisperer accept payment plans?