Her Life in Pictures: One

Humor me if you will...but writing is the way I heal my heart. Mabel Lou came along at the very beginning of my digital age. I've looked and looked for photos from that last roll of film I shot the day May came home... Her baby book doesn't hold them. I wrote in the details but the only photo is from her adoption announcement. I did find several of those pics on my computer though. Must have scanned them a long time ago. But I do know I bought my first digital camera the week after she moved into took over the house.

I thought it would be fun to look back over her very large life in a series.

Mabel made it perfectly clear from her first trip through the house just where she expected to sleep. Even though she was less than 1/2 the size she would grow up to be, she still only left me a sliver of the bed.  Look at the size of those paws!

Even though she had a bed in the den...one she looked so tiny in...

Mabel Lou also made it known where she preferred to be:

Every time I came out of my office, I found her on the sofa. It was the source of so many of our disagreements. When that sofa breathed its last, I replaced it with one I called "Mabel's sofa."

I am absolutely stunned at how lush the backyard looked back then. Amazing what money will pay for! Expensive water bills are a thing of my past! It feels irresponsible to me to have a green lawn when we live in a drought! And just look at those fences that Mabel would eventually tear down! No raccoon was ever safe behind that compared to the strength and determination of Miss Lou!

She was so tiny and scared of the raccoons at first, when I had to leave her alone, I would find her asleep on top of a glass table! I could just imagine coming home to a cut up pup! But one night, we heard the racoons under the deck and she raced to the end of the patio. She stopped there and looked back at me. Her look said, "You comin'?"

I told her, "No. That YOUR job!" If I only knew how seriously she would take me on that!

The other side of the yard was just as lush. This was before we got bloom drop in this area! Oddly enough, this is the first year I've planted veggies in years. I think my girl knew I was going to need a summer project.

One of her very first trips to the creek. She looks so small in the domain she would come to rule! As I was making calls today to plan her funeral, I realized, with the exception of my bestie, every friend we have, we met at the creek!

Ah....nothing like a fat puppeh tum right after a meal! She never liked having her tum rubbed and would sometimes growl if I tried. I think it made her feel vulnerable and a pup that had seven homes before finding her forever home probably didn't like that emotion very much. As she got older, she would grant me very brief tummy rubs, but I clearly got more out of it than she did. She was all about her head being petted!

Her first Halloween... She ate the halo! Dressing up was not for dignified rottenweilers according to Mabel Lou! Note the placement of her knees to avoid the bone on bone pain of hitting her Greyhound ribcage.

 

The photo is far more appropriate... you can see the devilment in her eyes!

Her first Christmas. The whole family came here and everyone spoiled her! My sister brought her tons of toys. My brother-in-law would work with her on training and allow her to sit on him on the sofa. My mother overfed her and her cousin Huggy played and played with her. She was a rather gracious hostess! With all that attention, how could she not be?

She adored Huggy and even figured out how to open his crate!  Still, Mabel being Mabel, she would get terribly jealous over her Granny! Here she is trying (succeeding!) to horn in on Mom petting Huggy.

Hug and May using my brother in law as a pillow:

And my personal fave...one you've maybe seen before. Mabel in her "Harley Mama" phase in the car. She would straddle the console, long skinny legs on either side of it and her left forearm draped over my right shoulder as I drove. She would use her left paw between her hind legs to brace her body! This phase only last a few months and I was quite happy when she simply grew too large to sit like that! I was always terrified she would go through the windshield!