Hey, you guys! Hi! It's me, Molly! I'm supposed to tell you ALL ABOUT ME! Yay!
I'm from the STREETS! When Suzanne's friend found me, I was wandering around in TRAFFIC! But then I got to ride in a truck, just like a construction worker!
Our friend found her in a busy intersection near the county dump, dodging traffic in a rainstorm. "I closed my eyes and waited for the thump, because I knew she was going to get hit and I couldn't watch." She made a lucky break for the median, and our friend sprang out of her truck and grabbed her. She had her Mastiff's spare collar in the truck, so she hung it loosely around Molly's neck. Having no space in the loaded cab or bed to put her, she placed her on the lock box, instructing the construction worker in the passenger seat to hang onto her through the sliding back window. She rode to safety that way, splayed flat across a slick, metal tool box.
They tried to find her family, because she was such a good dog that they were sure she must have been lost. After days of searching lost and found pages, and posting fliers at shelters and ads on Craigslist, it became apparent that nobody was looking for the little red puppy. All hope of finding her owners was gone, but they couldn't bring themselves to leave her to an uncertain fate at a shelter. "She's just too good of a dog. We have to find someplace for her."
And then that nice lady and her nice guy took me into their pack, and I got to play with a LOT of dogs! And then they brought me here, and I was really careful to do everything right when I met all of the dogs out here, so that I could be a part of this pack, too. And guess what? IT WORKED! See how I cozied up to my new best friend Winston? I'm SMART!
Over a couple of weekends, she met Winston, then Doc and The Chemist's dogs. Once we had a good feeling that everything was going to work out, we brought her in permanently. Our friends were sad to see her go. If their hands weren't already full with several foster dogs, I have a feeling that they would have kept her.
The only hitch in the handoff was that she came to us with a bum leg, the result of playing in a field and catching it on something sharp. The gashes were bad enough that they required surgery to heal. Her first two weeks here were spent with her leg wrapped up in cotton gauze, sports tape and an outer coating of duct tape. It's been a gauzy, tape-covered couple of months here at Casa Banana.
And then? I ATE the TAPE! YES!
And the Cone of Shame, too. She had that thing off in record time.
Molly is an enthusiastic, sharp young dog. It's a lot of fun watching her grow and learn. Everything we let her do is the best thing she's ever done, and everything we give her is the best thing she's ever been given. She approaches everything in her life with boundless optimism and joy. If that's not obvious in the pictures, it's because it's impossible for me to get a shot of her while she's being enthusiastic and joyful. She moves too damned fast, and I'm usually laughing to hard to take the picture. She's a good time.
I LIKE BONES!
Yes, thank you, sweetie. You like everything, don't you?
Let's see! I like bones, and Bully Sticks, and Kong toys, and Winston, and you guys, and Ernie, and eating, and my friends at the veterinary clinic, and socks, and watching the fish in the fishtank! Yep, I like EVERYTHING!"
It's not fair to compare her first few weeks here with Winston's, because she didn't have the enormous burden of learning to deal with Buddy. She's been allowed to run and tumble instead of spending countless hours on a tie-out while being taught to respect the tiny king. Winston didn't have that kind of freedom for months. I think that she's benefiting from the more casual atmosphere. Wherever she came from, however she happened to end up in that intersection, she doesn't seem to have gone through months of confinement. Winston came to us after more than six months in a kennel in Oakland. As a result, she seems to have come into her own a lot faster than he did. Who knows? Maybe none of that matters. Maybe Winston's just a more reserved dog than Molly, and that's O.K.
Yeah! So I'm teaching him to be more confident! We wrestle, and we run around the house, and we run around the back yard, and we play this game where Winston grabs one end of the rope and rolls on his back and then I drag him around on the carpet! He LIKES that game!
He does. I don't understand it. He played it with us, and now he's taught Molly to play, too. I used to try to get him to stand up and play tug with me, because dragging him around by his teeth across the carpet seemed cruel, but he'd pick up the rope and flop right back down again.
He hasn't been as successful at teaching her to play ball. I think the ball is just a little too big for her. None of these pictures do a good job of showing the size difference between the two of them. She's about forty pounds to his sixty, and not nearly as bulldog-blocky. She's definitely a mix of pit bull and something else, but everybody's guess at the "something else" is different.
Sometimes we practice being CALM and MATURE! Here's me and my new best friend Winston being GOOD QUIET DOGS!
This is a new one for Winston. Buddy wouldn't often cuddle with him, maybe only a handful of times in their lives together, and his other canine friends don't do much of it, either. He doesn't quite know what to do with her when she sidles up to him. He likes it, but he's not quite sure how he's supposed to respond.
Oh! And I like drinking a bunch of water and then running around until I throw up on the carpet! And sometimes on my new best friend Winston's feet! He should learn to dodge better! Love, Molly! By the way, that's me! I'm Molly! Hi!