RIP: JODIE - Dec. 21, 1999 - Aug. 14, 2014

I was born in December of 1999.  I had eight siblings.  They all
got homes before I did.  I had to be taken to the Animal Rescue
League in Brewster!  On my second day there, two guys named
Mark & George walked in and chose me to be their best friend!
Their first picture of me, above, was taken in the yard at the shelter.

Now I weigh close to a hundred pounds!  I'm mostly German shepherd,
but have some Chow & Collie in me.  I have black spots on my tongue.
I overheard the vet tell Mark that only two mammals in the world have
black tongues -- Chow dogs and killer whales!

I hope I never become too large to be a lap-dog!

I live on Mayflower Terrace in South Yarmouth on Cape Cod.

We've had skunks, opossums, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, and coyotes out back.
Once, when one of the human beings carelessly left the back door open, we came
home to find a young skunk eating the cats' food!

Mark with two of my sisters, Lily & Smudge.

My other two sisters, Emma Gray & Violetta, when they first moved in.

When I was introduced to Violetta, she had a notion to scratch my nose.
I quickly withdrew it!

Meanwhile, Emma Gray wanted nothing to do with me!
She's hiding under the blanket!  Later, though, she became
extremely fond of me.

In fact Emma's become a pest -- trying to nuzzle me, even putting her paws
around my neck, acting like we're best friends or something.  From my
perspective, definitely NOT!

The cats are allowed to eat from my dish, but I'm not allowed to eat from their dish.
I don't understand the double standard.

There's a cranberry bog just down the road.  It's one of my favorite places to be
walked.  In late autumn, though, when they're harvesting, I'm banned from there!

Mark & me on the path we can take through the woods to get to the cranberry bog.

Lily likes to come along on some of our walks.  Once a car came and she just sat down
in the middle of the road!  I had to run up to her and bark to tell her that the idea
is to get OUT of the road!  She's not terribly bright sometimes, but lovable!

Also, she's impossibly slow!  See Mark's flashlight way up the road, and how far behind
Lily is!  I have to keep looking back to make sure she's okay, and that is quite a
distraction I don't really need.

If we go too far, Lily asks Mark to carry her.  I can go almost any distance with no
problem.  Sometimes, though when we've had a really long outing at the beach, and
I've done lots of running, I can be pretty tired the next day.

When that happens, I just take a nap.

George & me on Mayflower Beach.

With Mark on West Dennis Beach.

Drying off after a swim on Mayflower Beach.

I love to run!  Running makes me happy!  Of the many pictures
the guys have taken of me, George says this is his favorite.

I'm a pretty good jumper!

I love swimming, and chasing seagulls and terns.  Last spring I came upon
a seal sunning itself on Mayflower Beach!  I thought it was a dog with no legs,
and wondered if it would like to play.  I barked at it.  It reared back its head
and barked back at me.  The next day George read in a newspaper article that
there's a $300 find if you let your dog get within 15 feet of a seal.  Good lord!'
I'd never hurt a seal!

I don't know about George and Mark though.

Still later we learned that even George or Mark aren't supposed to be anywhere near seals!

With Mark and Mary Brock in Provincetown.

On occasion Mark holds me upside down!

With George and his nieces Cindy and Diane, and his great-niece Kristen.

Kristen was lots of fun.  On our walks she liked us to go down the
darkest roads so she could put the flashlight under her chin to make
herself look like a ghost.  And, though I find it hard to believe, I think
her favorite animal in our house was Lily!

She did a nice drawing of herself, George, Mark, the four cats, and me!

With George and Oliver, who lives next door.  I used to be Oliver's girlfriend but then he got a
new Weirmaraner girlfriend and didn't like me anymore!  Between you and me, Oliver wasn't
that bright, so it wasn't that great of a loss!

I recently made a new friend from New Hampshire when Donna and Cheryl came for the
weekend and brought Donna's dog, Frosty.  Frankly, I got a crush on Frosty right away.  I
loved taking him to Mayflower Beach so he could see how good the soft sand feels on a set
of paws, and how much fun it is to chase seagulls.

I love it when it snows.  Here I'm running in our backyard.  George throws
snowballs and I chase them.

Each spring, when George burns the brush, I'm the designated Fire Warden.

Taking the spring air.

To me, everything has a fascinating scent, even a rock!

George will take up with almost any animal, such as with this goat on Conor Pass in Ireland,
which is eating his cigarettes.  I'm pretty sure though that he likes me best of all.

When I go between George's legs, he massages my haunches.

With Chris Cushing from Vermont, who came for a weekend.  He's training at a school
nearby to become a commercial pilot, and was trying to study navigation, but I wouldn't
let him stop petting me.

The worse thing Mark and George do is make me take a bath.  I hate baths!  I don't mind
running into the ocean on the coldest day of winter, but to take a warm bath is the pits.

For a long time, my only chore was to fetch the newspaper each morning.  Now, additionally,
I'm being put in the fenced-in backyard and told to bark when Emma Gray comes home at
night; a signal to Mark or George to come let her in.  I HATE this new job, but I do it.

Still, all in all, despite the additional chore, life's been good to me.

I'm happy to be an American dog!