German Short Haired Pointers.
TheGiantVermin, Flickr Other than the 1998 Luke Wilson movie, I didn't know much about dog parks before Anna and I got Pippi. I always imagined places where pups smelled each others' butts and guys attempted to pick up chicks. After our experience at one this weekend, however, I realize they can be much more intense. The park we visited was just off one of New Jersey's godforsaken stretches of highways and Pippi had a great time. She was a little shy around the other dogs at first, but eventually got into the swing of things. I'll talk more about her behavior in a future post about dog parks, but for now I want to focus on a particularly fraught incident. It began when a youngish guy came ...
Flickr/fazen Our apartment is not getting any bigger, but Pippi is. Anna and I are wondering: How big will our puppy get? I was recently out of town for a few weeks, doing research for a book I'm writing, and when I returned she looked bigger. It was not my imagination. When we adopted her in December she was about six months old and weighed 30 to 35 pounds. Now she's closer to 40. Of course, many dogs don't stop growing until they are two years old. As previously discussed, Pippi seems to be either a Dalmatian, German Shorthaired Pointer, or both (we're going to send away for the doggie DNA test soon). Her paws were (and are) too big for her body in that classic clumsy cute puppy way, ...
Ben Westhoff I mentioned last week that Pippi, our new white-and-liver-spotted puppy, is a sixth-month-old rescue who we think is a Dalmatian/pointer mix. We're not sure, however. Pippi's foster dad told us he got her from a Russian carpenter with whom he worked. This carpenter said that Pippi came from a breeder, but his English wasn't good enough to make out much more than that. If she came from a breeder, that would imply Pippi's a purebred, right? But a purebred what? When I walk her down the street, children point at her and yell, "Dalmatian!" But even though that breed can have brown spots (here's one that does), Pippi doesn't quite fit the mold of a purebred Dalmatian. Anna notes ...