Millie

Millie 

I am never quite sure which puppy was which when I looked at them in the now famous wooden box filled with pee smelling wood shavings.  Both of my girls have beautiful dark eyes and I really cannot remember which one was which the first day we saw them.  But if I were guessing, I would say that Millie was the most aggressive one of the bunch that day, and it has remained that way ever since.  

Eight years after bringing her home, she is still the one that wakes us up each morning with some of the craziest antics you could imagine.  She begins the ritual sometimes at 5:30 a.m. and if you are lucky, you might make it until 6:30.  What she wants, is simply to be fed.  But believe me, if you make her wait too long she will begin to make crazy huffing sounds, gyrate around the floor, and as a last ditch effort, jump up on the side as if to say “ hey man, get up, I gotta eat”.  

Millie is a beautiful yellow lab that most people would call blond.  She is white as is her sister Maddie.  Millie has always been hyped up and early on she established that she is the queen and that is all there is to it.  Millie is also a bit heavy.  Even though she eats nothing but diet food, she will not get below 85 pounds.  We have tried everything and finally we just make sure she gets no heavier.  

She is a hearty dog, ready to swim for hours, run after a ball or take a ride in the car.  She has to be the first one in the car and will get irritated when someone breaks rank and gets in ahead of her.  Millie can be the sweetest of all our dogs, if you can just get her to calm down a bit.  She has a tendency to be hyper.  You have to get her to slow down and then she will lovingly kiss you.  

Early on my wife taught both dogs to kiss her, yes on the mouth.  Millie happens to be a professional at this.  She will give you all you want and then some.  I often remind my wife that she also eats some very weird things out of the yard but that does not discourage her from kissing Millie. 

Millie’s all time claim to fame is that she is 100% perfect on shaking hands.  I taught her this early on and she can do it on command every time asked.  I have tested her for eight years and she has never failed to shake.  The better thing about it is, she does not force it on you, and she only does it when asked. Millie can also speak on command.  I taught her to bark when I put tow fingers together.  We learned pretty early, this is not such a great trick.  You see Millie does everything with gusto and when we asked her to bark, she gave it her all.  We don’t do this one much anymore, just for tricks when company comes over. 

As I mentioned earlier, Labs love to swim and Millie is no different.  She loves to get in the water, no matter the temperature and chase anything.  You throw it, she goes and gets it.  This game can go as long as you want it to, she won’t stop.  Labs love the water and Millie really loves it, along with going to get the orange dummies used by hunters to train their dogs.  In the summer, this is our pool activity.  We throw; they go get it, over and over and over!  Millie will go so hard her heart looks like it is about to explode.  When we try to make her rest, she simply will have none of it.  She wants to play and play she does. 

I try to look at my dogs now and see what I can learn from them.  They are simple, yet very smart creatures that have made our lives better.  Millie is what I would consider a simple dog, she wants to eat on time and be in charge.  How many of us would not want that?  She is large and in charge.  She is the alpha early in our dog ownership history.  When there were just two, she was in charge.  That would be challenged from time to time but in most cases, she maintained her position as number one. 

Millie is like the aunt in “My big fat Greek wedding”.  The one with the twin sister that was a tumor.  She is a bit loud and sometimes odd, but you cannot help but love her.  What you can learn from Millie is that eating is fun and it should be on time.  Swimming is a contact sport if there is something to fetch, and shotgun in the car is important. It is pretty simple, but then the longer you have her the more you realize she has some depth to her.  Sometimes when one of us is sick, this normally hyper dog suddenly has a sense of calm as she deals with you.  She gently kisses you, and sits s near you in a very calm manner.  She seems to know that you need her in a different mode, and she gets it done.  We have even seen her try to help in the pool when we would act like we needed rescuing.  

Millie has come to be known in our house as Mom.  Mom is the one to make sure you are taken care of and safe.  There is no doubt that if needed Millie would and could drag you to shore.  Each time I take time to look in those dark eyes, I see the cute little baby that tried to leap out of the box to go home with me.  The truth is there was no doubt, from the moment we saw her, we knew she was going home with us.  As I write this, she is lazing on a five hundred dollar ottoman in our family room, loving life seven years later.