The most under appreciated member of our family is this sweet dog. Look at her face.  That line up the middle of her nose just makes me want to squeeze her up. I have intentionally left out her body in this photo so that none of your comments include, "Dude she is F-A-T." Yes. I know. I pay the vet a ridiculous amount of money every three months when she has an ear infection to tell me that.  The last time I was in, they recommended a diet pill. Right. Because after I spend my kids' college fund on this damn vet visit, I would like to spend my retirement fund on your diet pills.

Any hoo how. I wanted to give her a moment and list some of the great things she does for this family. Assuage my guilt. Call it what you will.

On a daily basis our dialogue with her goes like this, "Daisy down," because she is in the way of our Wii game.  Or "Daisy off", when she is shoving her nose into the crotch of our unsuspecting visitor. Or. Daisy, "Outside", because someone has finally decided to show her a little attention and she gets all excited and starts shaking and snorting and jumping all around and all I can see is the hair flying off of her. Making her look just like Pig-Pen from Charlie Brown.

This is where I get to the great things about Daisy.

She will do ANYTHING for food.  I am talking walk into a forest fire for a piece of rice kind of anything. Thus making her a human vacuum cleaner which really comes in handy when you have a toddler.

She runs to the end of our driveway and fetches the newspaper every SINGLE morning. How did we train her to do that you ask? We made her do it in order to get her food. Of course.

She does a 360 which is quite popular with the boys' friends.  You hold a treat up and say 360 and she spins all the way around.  Also a hit with our drunk friends. She also does the usual sit, down, shake stuff.  Oh. And she does "circus dog" which means she stands on her back legs and dances until she gets a treat. Now who says she's dumb?  Oh. Right. That would be me.

But. Her most important trick is her bark.  It makes me feel so much safer when my husband is out of town to know that she is here protecting me. She isn't really discriminating in that bark.  For example just yesterday when I got out of my car she ran towards me barking like she had never seen me before.  But hey. You take the good with the bad.

SO. Thank you my little blonde dog for all that you do.  I hope you enjoyed your fifteen minutes. Yes. I know it was actually on about three.  But she won't know the difference if you don't tell her.

Note:  You might notice the onion peel on her nose.  It got stuck there when she was trying to eat a pile of peels that had fallen on the floor.  Anything. She will eat anything.