The Adventures of a Vet Student: The Family

I mentioned in the blurb about me that my husband and I have two furry children (and a fish!). When I was young my parents apparently played a game of who was smarter their new baby (me) or the basset hound (Darwin) that we had. It might have taken me a while but eventually I became smarter than Darwin :) Recently, I was telling Chris about my intelligence being determined by comparing me to the dog. It sparked a conversation about our dogs and their intelligence levels. When I graduated from college and moved into our new house I lived in Illinois by myself and wanted a dog for company. Chris pick out and surprised me with Elsie as a graduation present. She is a German Shepard mix (she potentially has some greyhound or whippet in her as well). She is by far one of the smartest dogs I have ever met. We call her Houdini. She first figured out how to escape from her cage while we were gone. It took us a while but we finally figured out how to keep her in her cage (turns out the best thing was when we adopted our other dog...apparently Elsie was bored by herself!). Last month Elsie figure out how to jump onto the 2x4 cross beam of our gate and balance (while barking at all the people passing by). Once she mastered that hoping down on the other side of the gate and chasing random people was quite the game!

In October Chris and I adopted Ally who is a pit bull lab mix (??? maybe???) from the animal shelter. She is the sweetest dog. She may not be as intelligent (ok she is nowhere close to being as intelligent) but she makes up for it in enthusiasm. She is always so excited to see us. Every night she starts of sleeping on the floor and every morning she ends up laying with her head on my chest looking at me, just hoping that it is time for breakfast.

We aren't completely sure what Ally's life was like before coming to live with us but when she first came home she was really skittish with Chris and cowered if she got in trouble. We have been working with her a lot and she no longer is skittish around men. While she still manages to get into trouble she no longer cowers on the floor.