OK, OK, it’s not until tomorrow, but since everything else here has been posted late I figured that it would be alright to start the birthday celebration early.

It’s hard to believe that the little bundle of chubby puppy is turning 1 year old! She has grown into her almost full size, but still has a bit of her puppy-like expression. Some  highlights of the wonderful months that she’s been around…

Here she is just a couple weeks ago, posing while I test out my new camera (consider that a warning – I even signed up for a dog photography course one weekend next fall )…

Just a month ago we were all romping around in huge piles of mountain snow…

And there was the fantastic boat trip in Bourgogne last fall, complete with canine captains…

Don’t you just want to hug her?

She was 6 months old on that trip. Already she’s become more “adult” in several ways. She picks her playmates in the woods more selectively, rather than trying to get every single dog to play with her.  And she does fine being left alone for a few hours (on that boat trip she made a lot of noise just when the two of us got off the boat to hold the ropes while we were in a lock).

She still loooves to play, and then she poops out at home again…

We call this her “sleep like an Egyptian” position (Remember the song “Walk like an Egyptian”?) She makes the most amusing grunting sounds while she sleeps, sometimes quite melodious. We think they sound like satisfaction and contentment, though the timing sometimes makes it sound like she’s questioning whatever we were saying just then.

Of course she’s not yet an adult and does have those adolescent moments when she turns on her selective deafness – it’s a teenager thing and doesn’t last long. She’s a wonderfully good dog, who is friendly and polite with two- and four-leggeds alike. Our day-to-day lives changed when Ducky came, and we wouldn’t have it any other way! Happy birthday Ducky!