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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • I have three quick stories about the westie we had when I was a kid. For context, she was about 16 inches at the shoulders, so a large westy but hardly a large dog.

    1. We were out walking when I was about 12 y/o. She always thought she was the biggest dog in the room. A black lab started barking in what I took to be a threatening way. He charged his buried invisible fence and just yipped as he went through it and his collar shocked him. He charged straight towards us, barking and growling. My little girl ran up under his chest, clamped down with her teeth, and held on, shaking her head like she’d caught a rodent. The lab freaked out, running in circles until he finally shook my dog off, then went barreling back into his yard.

    2. The same westie acted like a cat lot of the time. Very independent and only wanted attention on her terms. When I had my wisdom teeth out and was doped up on pain killers, she just laid with me on the couch for a full day, very out of character for her.

    3. She understood very well when she had done something that she shouldn’t. When we’d get home, if she’d gotten into the trash or left us a “present” somewhere (after we left her home along too long), she would strike a very guilty pose and show us where she’d done the bad thing. One day we got home and she was telling us she’d done something wrong. She took me to the bathroom to show me but I couldn’t find any evidence of what she’d done. She was upset that I couldn’t find it but, eventually, we gave up and went to do something else. The following morning I discovered that she had managed to clamber into the bath tub and left her “present” in the tub. She was a very smart girl, figured out that the tub was the best place for that, and went through the effort of climbing in before doing her business. I brought her to the bathroom to see if she remembered. She started to whine and look guilty again so I told her she was a very good girl and did exactly the right thing. She rarely pooped in the house but, from then on, when she did, she would go do it in the bath tub.