Dakota

Four more years pass. We move from the heavily populated (backyard the size of a postage stamp) Jersey Shore to the tree infested wilderness of Pennsylvania. Okay, this is what I dreamed about, but I spent my whole life with streetlights and lots of people. I can't see the neighbor's house! It's really DARK here at night. I need a BIG dog.

We are in our house exactly one week when I spot an ad for White German Shepherd puppies in the newspaper. OK, not the best place to find a dog, but I'm desperate. I'm a scaredy-cat. There aren't any POLICE STATIONS in this town for crying out loud, for that matter, there isn't even a town.... It's really DARK.

Long suffering Husband comes home from work ("We don't need another dog"), humors me and off we go to look at the puppies. Suffice it to say the term "backyard breeder" would be a major step up for this place. The 9 puppies are in a tiny chicken wire fence enclosing a mud hole at the rear of a ramshackle outbuilding. I'm ready to bolt but the "person" is opening the latch, out bound 9 filthy (white?) 6 week-old-to-the-day puppies. Eight of them scatter in all directions, running, barking, bounding in circles around the yard. The 9th puppy runs to Husband, jumps up, runs in circles around HUSBAND, yipping, bouncing, prancing, flops at his feet. Husband picks up the puppy with pure ecstasy in his eyes, 'Which one do you want?'

From that inauspicious beginning, Dakota has become the quintessential "guard dog". She looked like a polar bear cub when we finally got her cleaned up and she looks like a white wolf now. She is very intimidating when she is barking, growling, and snarling at strangers. I have no doubt at all that she would die to protect us (and not without doing considerable damage to the offender). She protects the house and all its occupants from every danger - real and imagined. She keeps the peace amongst her siblings - appearing out of nowhere when the playing gets too rough and "breaking it up" like a professional referee. If one of the other dogs has the temerity to play-bark or growl at Dad (he usually instigates it, of course), she is there in an instant, herding them out of the way, all the while rumbling at them to "knock it off, that's DAD you idiot, you don't bark at HIM". She understands everything we say and relays it back with a twitch of her nose, flip of her tail or the way she pricks her ears. She is the most docile, sweet, loving dog you can imagine with her family. She has no food, toy or sleep space aggression at all with Husband or myself; in our reality she is like a giant, cuddly stuffed animal. But I haven't been afraid of the dark for the past 3 and a half years and I still haven't found the Police Station.

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