Lucy Blog - Lucy 18 months

18 months ... a whole year and a half! At what point do we stop counting her age in months?? Warning .. this has quite a few videos so it may load a little slowly.

The last month has been rather uneventful, although we are now able to get out a bit longer and further to let Lucy play. For her birthday, we went out to the Fôret de Buzet (the Buzet forest) to let her walk for almost 2 hours through the woods. It was actually on the day after her birthday because we figured Monday would be less busy there than a Sunday. Without many people there, we could let her go off the leash for pretty much the entire walk.

One thing that Lucy really likes to do is sit on our balcony and just watch the happenings in the park that we overlook. She normally doesn't bark or anything ... she just sits and watches. We always wonder what is going through her little head.

She also likes to look at ducks. One of our normal walks takes us down one of the canals, and sometimes there are ducks there. We make sure that she doesn't jump into the canal, but she likes to watch what they are doing.

Another set of ducks, this time in the lake next to her play area in the park. The water is now high enough that she can't get down on the bank (which she did a month or so ago) but she still spends quite a bit of time right at the edge. Sometimes we think that the ducks consciously swim closer to her when Lucy is on the bank. Go figure...

It has been really quite mild so far in December, but we did have one morning where there was frost on the ground in our little play area. This is Lucy and her pal, Java. You normally wouldn't think that a Corgi and a German Shepherd would play so well together, but they do. Unfortunately, this was one of the last days that Java was in Toulouse ... she gets to spend 1/2 of the year in Martinique!

Now back in the house for some inside-fun! She likes to play with a couple balls down our hallway. We had initially taught her to retrieve the ball inside, down the hallway, which she likes to do. Other times, she prefers to grab a different toy (or a 2nd ball) in her mouth and somewhat play soccer with the ball ... trying to block it, and then rolling it back using a combination of nose and paw.

Tom sometimes will play tug-a-war with her, although this was a relatively short game. A few seconds and she decided that a belly-rub was better than playing!

There are several larger dogs that also frequent the same park and, in many cases, at the same time. One of them is Pogo, who I call a Malinois but Tom spoke with the owner and she said it was a different breed but I don't remember what she said it was. The black lab is going to be a guide dog but in the mornings, he has his "I'm not working" jacket on, and sometimes he stops by the play with Lucy.

And here we have Java (the German Shepard), the black lab, Lucy, and a little wire-hair dachshund named Ness (like Loch Ness). Sometimes it is a bit difficult getting videos of the dogs and not all of the owners standing around watching them.

One of her favorite places to play, alone or with a friend, is this little area that has tall clumps of some type of grass. At certain times of the year, she likes to dig around in the dirt, and then eat the tall blades of grass.

And now, one of her more recent playmates is named Rollie (well, that is what it sounds like to us), a little 4-month-old puffball. The way they tend to play is that Lucy runs and Rollie chases, with Lucy stopping and looking back to be sure the puppy is still following. Then she will stop and let the puffball jump on top of her. Sometimes she lays down and lets the puffball pummel her on the head.

And the Puffball wins!

As you can see, sometimes Lucy seems to get a little rough with the little thing. It doesn't like to play quite as rough as some of Lucy's other friends play. Most of the time, Lucy can throttle back with smaller dogs but every once in awhile, her aggressiveness comes out.

A few silly pictures of her sleeping ... during the summer, she spent most of her sleep-time on the hardwood floors. As we have moved into the cooler temperatures, she prefers her bed (under our desk), and up on the sofa. Sometimes, we can't imagine that her sleep positions are comfortable!