Settling into place

We're settling down a bit after receiving yesterday's news about Demi's progressive health issue. I'm posting her formal Turn-In portrait, taken in May, 2006 when she was 20 months old. She began Advanced Training, successfully completed the entire six months but didn't make a match in Team Training. So she trained for two more months and was matched in a side placement in January, 2007. She is now 3-1/2 years old.

What's especially heartbreaking to me is knowing how hard Demi struggled to live after she was born. Her litter was more than a week premature (that's a long time for dogs) and all the other puppies died. Demi was given to a caretaker when she weighed a mere six ounces and was fed with an eye-dropper until she was strong enough to nurse from a surrogate dog. And then she thrived and began Kindergarten Puppy Training on schedule at eight weeks. Demi is a full labrador retriever but quite small for her breed, never getting over 50 pounds and often several pounds less.



We always enjoyed Demi. She was a sweet puppy to raise and was usually well-behaved, not the kind of dog who gets into things. There was one day which was an exception -- the day Brix got a bag of flour out of the cupboard and Demi joined in the mischief. Here's a picture of my Flour Girl.