A Girl and Her Dog

This is my dog Sydney. She is a 15 month old lab-boxer mix that we adopted from the Franklin County Humane Society. Family members will remember when we first adopted Sydney about a year ago this month. She was a mere sixteen pounds and barley stood as high as my knees. Now some 64 pounds later, she is almost fully grown but still has the heart and mind of a puppy (that would be the lab influence in her).

As you can plainly see from the picture, Sydney also has an extremely long tongue. I'm not sure if this is boxer or lab, but in any case, I receive comments on it almost every time we take a walk. I imagine her tong rolling up in her mouth like one of those old window shades that snap and roll up to the top when you pull the bottom. Honestly, I don't know where she puts it all - it's a really long tongue.

Sydney loves to walk. She would probably be most happy if we walked twice a day, but alas her momma doesn't have the time or energy to do two walks in a single day. We do however try to get outside at least 3-4 times per week. This summer has been brutally hot, so we've taken up to walking in the morning before work. I'm still amazed at how she can go from dead asleep, snoring in my ear (don't get me started on how we can't get her out of our bed) to full on wide awake, tail wagging and ready to hit the sidewalk. Meanwhile, her blurry-eyed momma is stumbling to the bathroom to put on whatever T-shirt and shorts she can find and scrape her hair back into a ponytail. If I had a tail, it would certainly not be wagging at 6:15 in the morning.

This morning we had a great walk. It was actually pretty cool outside and that made Sydney and me very happy. When it finally starts to cool down here in North Carolina (today's high is suppose to be around 90 degrees), we'll switch to walking after work. At either time of day, Sydney is still very excited to get out an walk, tongue flapping in the breeze and tail wagging all the way.