It's not the greatest photo ever—it doesn't do any justice to Stella's best feature, her gorgeous brindly coat—but it was the best I could get this afternoon while the dogs were running around the yard. I wish I'd gotten a better shot of Opus, who suddenly turned out to be some kind of PETA-type today when he finally got his first shot at a real live, non-canine, non-human mammal, a tiny little baby mole. He'd been digging at one spot behind a tree for about an hour, and eventually I went out to see what he had. At first I thought it was a mouse, but then I saw the big pink snout and I knew it was a mole. He acts bloodthirsty enough when there's a raccoon in the next yard, but he was just batting at this thing and worrying it without actually killing it. Now the Mr. is calling him The Mole Annoyer. Great for a growing dog's dignity, I'm sure.
And I wish I'd gotten a better shot of Lola, who at six months is the cutest little sugarlump of all time. It's amazing how much she's grown and how much stronger she's gotten in just two months. When she came to us she was a jangly bag of bones, just a Slinky in a furry sack. She wasn't skinny, necessarily—there was some padding in that fur-sack—but she was a weak little couch potato. She couldn't even get down stairs by herself. Now she's sleek and muscular, and she can run and jump and turn on a dime with the best of them, even outpacing Opus half the time. She has a trick of pogoing from side to side in front of me, backing up as I walk, that is just too cute to be legal. Next time I hope I'll have a good shot of her. For now here's a not-so-perfect one, taken with flash a few weeks ago:
Don't call the Humane Society on me just yet for putting that hoodie on her. I got it because she was being such a baby about going out in the cold. Not sure if it was the humiliation of having to wear a hoodie, or just the fact of growing up in general, but she's a lot better about that now.
