Lily is a Yorkshire Terrier x Apricot Poodle. This is the story of how she has changed our lives.
The best time with Lily is our evening cuddle, she throws herself at my shoulder (the start of this was the trick 'hug' leaning her head against me) and gazes into my face with her beautiful dark brown eyes which slowly close in a dozy haze. I love her more than I could have imagined. I suspect that she knows just how to manipulate her humans with this hug thing, it is the top trick in her repertoire. As the evenings draw out I start to think that Lily would benefit from longer walks. Each day, armed with poo bags, walking boots, lead, and Lily's love we set of to conquer the Cotswolds.
It's time for our every other weekend trip to Cornwall to a little holiday bolt hole, which we bought the summer before Lily's arrival. Getting ready we pile our gear in the hallway prior to packing it into the Jeep. Lily's bed is on top of the mountain of bags full of food, toys, leads and when we cant find Lily anywhere, we realised … Lily! Her 'you're going I'm going' attitude typical of her gutsy little personality. In Cornwall, her bed is moved around all over the cottage. It is being renovated so she is firstly between floor joists in front of the open fire while the external doors are off! Next we move her upstairs using a ladder instead of a staircase and her little nose peeps downstairs if she needed to go out.
The summer has arrived at last so we can go for longer walks on the beach. Of course, you can't throw sticks for dogs, especially on the beach where they can stick in the sand and stab your running dog in a way you don't want to think about. But Lily has found a different and most excellent toy. Seaweed. Slimey and tough with a heavy root end to take it yards up the beach with Lily racing after it, exhausted, sandy mouthed, panting and returning, seaweed in mouth, with never ending enthusiasm for another throw. She walks the high tide debris searching out the best piece of seaweed and bites it down to a manageable size, still twice the length of her little frame.
Lily is in season, she is very amorous with a Yorkshire Terrier in the pub! Three months pass and we book Lily in to be spayed. She has a history of leg ops prior to our adoption of her, shallow knee holes shaved out or something, not a good enough gene pool to share. When we arrive home we decide that the downstairs loo, previously her bedroom, is too chilly for her raw scar and her bed gets promoted to the carpeted lounge. Of course the bed hardly gets slept in again as sofas and chairs are so much more inviting. High ground is Lily's thing too. She perches behind my ear on the back of the feather cushioned chair. Superior and haughty overseeing her manor! Her scar is healing beautifully and soon we will be back out on our walks. Time for a trip to Cornwall. The salt water and sandy beaches do us all good. Lily's scar has healed. Searching for seaweed we walk the sand dunes and around Gribben Head, long walking with friends, Lily bouncing ahead, tail high and nose down.
It's time for a haircut. On arrival, Lily had a longish winter coat of curls, matted under her eyes with disgusting tear stains, thick and immovable. I bought a bottle of tear stain remover but it takes two holding her down and a pair of eye scissors to remove the offending gunk. Baby wipes every day are the answer, and as Lily wakes up from snoozing on the bench by the front door I can attack her with the scissors almost every day to prevent the build up of hair on her face again. She looks like a Steiff bear and the village kids love little Lily even more. They can't pick her up of course, she is a feisty little terrier and always has to be supervised with little people! Because she looks like a teddy bear she appears very cuddly, this is definitely a wolf in lambs clothing and not to be messed with. Her hair grows at a great pace and as it gets longer on her back she has little patches of black, residual black hair from her puppy days. I wield the scissors and give her a brilliant if slightly amateur haircut. She has gone from being a slightly rotund looking dog to a skinny little pup, prancing around the garden with her lighter load and a bone as a reward. Birds flock into the garden and sparrows are carting off the snipped off hair by the beak-full, a perfect nest liner.
Read Episode 1 here https://steemit.com/story/@dodders007/lily-s-story-episode-1-the-rescue-an-original-short-tale