Moxie

I’d like to introduce the newest member of our family, Moxie. She’s been living with us for a little while now, but I didn’t want to announce the good news until I knew that she would be staying. She is about 3 years old and was given up by her previous owners when they found out she was pregnant. So these classy people wouldn’t get her spayed, and then didn’t want her when she got pregnant. Nice. But their loss is our huge gain. Moxie is so sweet and fits in wonderfully with our family. I know she must miss her babies terribly, but she and I are both comforted to know that the rescue that took Moxie in adopted out all 7 of them to good homes. She gets pretty worked up when she sees puppies, but I don’t really blame her. The rescue said they fostered her and her puppies for a while at a nice home, and that Moxie kept jumping the 4-foot fence and returning with squirrels and rabbits to feed to her babies (even though they were all getting fed regularly). What a dedicated mother! And thank goodness we have a 6-foot fence.

As for her lineage, well, guesses are welcome! The rescue kept saying she is part Border Collie, and the vet says that he has no idea. She weighs about 35 pounds and is pretty lean. She has some crazy poufy hair on the top of her head which reminds me of a specific breed, but I can’t remember which one. She is such a nice color, an orangey-brown. The rescue had named her Foxy because they thought she looked like a fox, which she kind of does. I just couldn’t get on board with that name, but we wanted to keep it close sounding since she seemed to be responding somewhat to Foxy. Roxie wasn’t working for me either, and I had no clue what to do until, as usual, it was the Army Man to the rescue coming up with Moxie. I love it, and it fits her perfectly.

From what we’ve observed and what the rescue told us, it seems like Moxie wasn’t treated so well in her old home. She is pretty jumpy at sudden movements, and gets really freaked out if you move your hand by her head too quickly. I guess she used to get hit, which is so sad. I hope she’ll quickly learn that that won’t happen here. I also think she must have been kept in the garage at her old house, because she hangs out by the garage door a lot and especially wants to go in there at night. She wants nothing to do with her crate, which is making things tricky. The worst part though is that she seems scared of the Army Man, which is just silly because all he wants to do is love her and play with her. And speaking of playing, I’ve never met a dog like her that doesn’t seem to want to play. She’s perfectly content to chew on her bone all day. She does seem to have fun when we go on runs though. As far as we can tell, Moxie is totally housetrained, although she doesn’t seem to know much else. I guess my work is cut out for me!

So now we have a whole new level of excitement in our home. Laura is just in love with her, and is over her initial disappointment that we wouldn’t name the dog “Princess” or “Christmas Tree”. Moxie is so good with Laura, and tolerates all of Laura’s attention so gracefully. Laura is gentle and sweet with Moxie, although jealousy has already reared its ugly head, when Laura pitifully told me today at the vet that she knows I love Moxie the best. Poor thing! A quick snuggle and me telling Laura that I loved her the best (in secret, so we didn’t hurt Moxie’s feelings) seemed to put everything right.

I did my best to get some pictures of Moxie to include, but apparently I am completely incompetent when it comes to photographing dogs. You’ll have to put up with a few slightly blurry pictures, but hopefully you get the idea. And she has an ear infection and is getting drops, so that is why the fur by her ears looks so weird. The drops smell so bad, and she hates them (of course), which makes for quite the crash course in doggie ownership!