My Lola

There are cat people and there are dog people. Me? I'm a dog guy.

Miles, Griffin, Lola, and Jenna

In my life there's been seven of them. Mister Buster, Pax, Donnegan, Casey, Fairchild, Marley, and now Lola.

What, you say? It seems everyone has a dog and everyone has written about their dog? I answer back with, "there's just one thing, mine is special."

I say to Lola every day, "Of all the dogs there ever were, you're the best dog ever." She just wags her tail and licks my face.

She has a great life.

She sleeps on our bed and she goes on long walks (FYI you have to spell walk when talking about one or she starts barking). She sometimes gets ground beef or chicken mixed in with her dog food and she gets asked all the time by one of my twins as he's petting her, "Who's a good girl?"

The correct answer is Lola is.

Griffin, Lola on one of her beds, and Miles

She does so many things well, one of them is she keeps the world safe from squirrels.

Lola is very fast and after my brother saw her run he said, "She has closing speed." I take her to a nearby park and let her off her leash. That park has a big soccer field and if a squirrel dares to venture onto that field and Lola's there? Well let's just say they've been warned.

She's a Goldendoodle.

I had never heard of them before I had one. This is how she came to be--I wanted a dog and I didn't want a small one. I wanted a bigger dog, so I suggested a Golden Retriever but my wife said no because they shed. She talked about hair being everywhere and said in no uncertain terms that she wasn't going to vacuum it up.

She suggested a Poodle.

I said no way and might have said something about them being trimmed like hedges. So there we were at an impasse. One day we went to a restaurant to have breakfast with our kids and on our way out we saw this cute as a button brown dog. We asked the owner what kind of dog he was.

"A Goldendoodle," he answered.

Licking My Maya.
She named Lola Lola.

"They're great with kids, extremely smart, extremely sweet. And get this," he continued, "they don't shed."

A compromise had been reached.

Next thing I knew I was in our car with my wife and her mother heading towards a puppy to be named Lola. After we picked her up and as we were leaving to go home my wife wanted to sit in the back seat with her while I drove. There's just one thing, I wanted to sit in the back with her sitting on my lap and bonding with me on the way home.

Well after threatening to hold my breath until I turned blue I won out. But. They say don't mess with karma. Lola threw up on me three times on the way home. The sound I heard was my wife and mother-in-law laughing all the way to our house.

She had a crate to sleep in and that night we made the mistake of leaving her in the playroom. After much howling we brought Lola into the bedroom and everything after that, as they say, was Jake.

Lola left Griffin right

Did someone say smart?

If she's out front running free and a neighbor comes by with their dog of course she runs toward them. But if you say, "Lola, come here," she turns around and comes right back.

That, my friends, is gold.

What's so funny is she wouldn't hurt a fly and has never bitten anyone but if the doorbell rings she barks, sounding like she's ten feet tall. Plus when the garbage truck rumbles by or the kids are playing in the street she's also been known to bark.

File that second one under,"I thought I heard something."

Like most dogs she loves to go for a ride in the car with me. Lola sits in the passenger seat and more than one person at a stop light has laughed when they see her. When we had a Jeep she would put her head out of the top of it.

Lola and the sun roof

One time the house was full of fleas and ticks because of you know who. Since she's been known to sleep on the bed with us I was a scratchin' and a kickin'. It seems funny now but wasn't so funny then.

Because she's half Golden and half Poodle sometimes when she get's groomed she looks like a Retriever and sometimes like a full blown Poodle.

But always dear and always sweet.

I say her full name is Lola The Dog and whether I'm up or down, happy or sad, she's always the same loving Lola.

One of the best friends I've ever had.

Miles, Lola and Griffin
Today

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