I missed Pascale’s “gotcha’ date with everything that’s been going on around here, but felt it a necessary break of sadness and stress to celebrate my gangly black panther dog.

As a furbaby mother, I shouldn’t pick favorites. I should love all my babies equally and cherish them in their own individual ways.

But I don’t. Pascale is my favorite. She is best dog, and I even tell this to Eliot quite frequently. I will always adore Eliot and he’s my favorite Springer Spaniel, but Pascale is best dog.

She’s kind of like a Dr. Seuss book. I can take her in the yard. I can take her in the car. I can take her to the bar. I can take her near and far.

She likes the other dogs. She likes to chase at frogs. She likes young boys and girls. She likes to dance and twirl.

As I’m a fan of memes, I felt like this one pretty accurately summed up what it’s like to live with Pascale:

Black is an appropriate color for her, because she is my shadow. The ONLY thing that makes her upset is when I shut the door of my bedroom in my apartment. You know, so I might enjoy sleeping without a 60 lb dog spooning me from time to time. When she’s shut out, she whines and pouts and lays outside my room so dramatically that I can hear a loud thump against the door before her broken hearted sigh.

I should add that everything else in life besides being locked outside the door, makes Pascale deliriously happy. Everything.

Eliot is a bit of a loose canon, but Pascale has been able to adapt fabulously to him. She will approach him with a happy wag, but at the first sign that he’s getting annoyed with her she will instantly flop upside down in front of him as if to say “WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND NOW? DOES THIS HELP? I LOVE YOU!” They even wrestle some now, which says more about Pascale’s interpersonal dog skills than it does about Eliot’s behavioral improvement.

One of the reasons I took her home begged Tim to let me keep her, is that I wanted a barn dog. If you can overlook her tendency to eat horse manure (mmmm delicious), she is a great friend to have at the barn. While I warmup Simon, she’ll follow me in laps around the ring until she’s used up some excess energy. Then she’ll lay in the soft sand (usually in a hole she’s dug) outside of the ring and watch me as I go. You can see her in the background of a lot of my pictures, my favorite being this one:

Pascale is a perpetual puppy – still slightly naughty and full of energy. She’s very in tune with me and my feelings though, which makes up for the challenges of having a hyper dog. While Eliot has gotten a bit aloof and moody in his old age, Pascale will always come snuggle me. Usually I don’t have to call her, because she’s just there by my side. When I need a dog kiss I barely get her name out of my mouth before she’s right there staring at me with her little pitty face.

She’s a gangly, two year old “Manor Black Dog” and she’s a great friend to me.

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