My mother Doris got Lucy sometime probably in 2005, when Leah and I got married. She was mainly my idea. I thought my mother would need someone to keep her company. It turned out that Lucy did that quite well. Mother eventually started letting Lucy sleep on her bed with her. Lucy knew when it was bedtime. She ran back to Mother’s bedroom, jumped up on the bed and burrowed beneath the covers.

I’m supposed to be here, so you can just leave me alone.

Now that my mother is gone, we have inherited Lucy. I prefer big dogs*. Like most small dogs, Lucy is too yappy, and her little legs seem so fragile I’m afraid I’m going to break them when I dry her feet on rainy days. Lucy is also spoiled and disobedient. That’s the result of seven or eight years of getting treats and her way all the time. My mother couldn’t lean down to give her the treats out of her hand, so she just sort of dropped them towards Lucy’s open, waiting mouth. As a result, Lucy learned to snap at food. So one thing she’s going to learn pretty quickly is not to nip the hand that feeds her. She’s a pretty smart little dog, so I think she’ll learn.

The one problem is that having Lucy may mean I don’t get another doberman pinscher. I have had four, and I wanted another after Zeus died two years ago. Now if I got one, it would mean we would have three dogs. Of course we do have six cats, so …

Lucy in her new home

But now she’s here and we both agree that’s where she should be. She has her own bed. She won’t be getting on our bed, but she burrows into the comforter that I got for my mother.

*Zeke weighs about 90 pounds, so the average weight of all of our dogs is over 50 pounds. Zeke and Lucy both could stand to lose a little weight.