The birthday boy
Today marks a very special day in our household. Today is Grady's 10th birthday! I mentioned it to Kirk this morning, and he said "Do we really know that it's today?". I keep track of these things, he doesn't. Just to be sure, I looked through our "dog" file a few minutes ago (the file where we keep all his important papers) and confirmed that he was born on May 15, 1996. Exactly where he was born, I can't be sure. We adopted him at age 3.5, and he had spent the first few years of his life bouncing around from various training programs where people tried to train him to be something he's not. First, it was the Paws with a Cause program in Michigan where he was supposed to be trained to help the disabled, and later it was the US Customs Service in Virginia where he was supposed to be trained to snif for drugs. Ah, yes, what a sordid tale it was...
We've come a long way with him. Only those of you who knew us back in 1999 truly know what a disaster of a dog he was when we adopted him. He was so wild that we literally could only be with him for a few minutes at a time. For the first several months he had to be contained in just one room of the house for most of the day. After all these years, he still has his quirks and he's still a bit neurotic, but I love him and he makes me smile every day.
His latest obsession is eating sticks. I realized recently that, since moving to Switzerland, he missed playing with sticks. In Arlington, our yard was filled with big trees so there were always lots of sticks. So sometimes when I'm out walking I pick up a few sticks to bring back for him (because our yard here in Basel has only a few, small trees that don't seem to drop dog-worthy sticks). The point was for him to chase and retrieve the sticks. But instead he chooses to eat them. I try to discourage this because it only results in him throwing up later, but sometimes I just can't be bothered. He enjoyed eating sticks in the backyard yesterday as I planted some flowers... and who was I to complain? At least he wasn't disturbing my gardening! Happy Birthday, Grady!
We've come a long way with him. Only those of you who knew us back in 1999 truly know what a disaster of a dog he was when we adopted him. He was so wild that we literally could only be with him for a few minutes at a time. For the first several months he had to be contained in just one room of the house for most of the day. After all these years, he still has his quirks and he's still a bit neurotic, but I love him and he makes me smile every day.
His latest obsession is eating sticks. I realized recently that, since moving to Switzerland, he missed playing with sticks. In Arlington, our yard was filled with big trees so there were always lots of sticks. So sometimes when I'm out walking I pick up a few sticks to bring back for him (because our yard here in Basel has only a few, small trees that don't seem to drop dog-worthy sticks). The point was for him to chase and retrieve the sticks. But instead he chooses to eat them. I try to discourage this because it only results in him throwing up later, but sometimes I just can't be bothered. He enjoyed eating sticks in the backyard yesterday as I planted some flowers... and who was I to complain? At least he wasn't disturbing my gardening! Happy Birthday, Grady!
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