Adopted June 2008

5/31/09:

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since we picked Cricket up. I know I tell you this in every email, but she's such an amazing dog. She's still 32 pounds and amazingly strong.

We've started taking her to a local dog park. There's a big dog side and a little dog side. We take her to the big dog side and she wears out all of the big dogs. None of them can keep up with her. We've been there for an hour and a half or two hours a few times, and she just runs and runs the whole time. She really likes to play with dogs who outweigh her by at least 30 pounds, but are the same color as her. She tries to play with any dog that's black with a white chest.

Don's been working with Cricket on catching a frisbee. She's great with a tennis ball, but it took her a long time to figure out how to track the frisbee in the air and time her jump to catch it. We spent Saturday at Don's school, so we threw the frisbee for her in the field just outside of his classroom. I attached a picture of Cricket from inside
the classroom and two of her jumping for the frisbee. She can leap at least five feet into the air!

We're almost out for the summer, so we'll be heading to our cabin in northern California for a month. Cricket's been to the cabin four times now, and she thinks she owns it and the forest around it. After four weeks, she'll be sure she's in charge.

March 2009:

We haven't sent you any pics or an update since August. Cricket is doing well. After returning home from six weeks on the road over the summer, she spent four days in the Sierras in October, a week at the cabin in northern California over Thanksgiving, and a week at the big cabin up the Entiat river in Washington over Christmas. She's topped out around 32 pounds of nearly solid muscle. She can pull me for five miles on my roller blades, and Don has been taking her out to run along side his bike. She loves to run, but she especially loves to fall behind and sprint as fast as she can to catch up. She ran behind me while I rode a snowmobile at Christmas, even. She has gotten used to us being gone during the day at school, but she loves the three of us being together at the end of the day. Our friends have a 90 pound lab named Yugi that
Cricket is friends with. Cricket looks like a mini version of Yugi...they even both have red collars. They play endlessly until exhaustion. She also plays with Don's parent's dog who is about 10 pounds, named Suzi. Mostly Suzi runs and Cricket chases her around their living room. They have a light that you touch to turn it brighter or dimmer. Every time Suzi runs by it and Cricket follows, Crickets bumps the light and changes the output. All evening long, the light is constantly dimming and brightening from the dogs. Her first reaction to everything new is still fear and timidity, but she has never been aggressive in her fear. She is so funny and makes us laugh constantly.

I've attached a few pics from this fall and winter.

Thanks for letting us adopt Cricket...she's fantastic!

Summer 2008:

June 2008:

Cricket is so wonderful! (She reminds us so much of our lab mix we lost this spring.) (This is my second attempt at emailing you, because my parents' computer is having some "issues" this morning. I can't attach pictures, but I will send some as soon as we can use our laptop on a wireless connection...maybe in a day or two.)

Our trip home was great...no puking! We stopped at Bonaparte and immediately had people asking us about her. She rode from Republic to Tonasket on a pillow on my lap. We stopped at my uncle's chainsaw shop, and she met his german shephard, Kylie. They got along great, although she was still quiet and unsure. She was exhausted and kept falling asleep in the shop.

She slept most of the rest of the way to Cashmere on her bed in the backseat. When we got to mom and dad's house, she was playing in the backyard and running around. By the end of the night she had learned to sit on command and she's about half way to learning how to play fetch with a tennis ball. Today, we're going to start lessons on walking on a leash and responding to the word "come." She is so smart that we know she'll learn those skills soon.

My parent's jack russell, Murphy, has really loved having Cricket here. They were running around and playing together. He is usually calm and mellow and doesn't play much with other dogs, but he really likes her. His sister died about 9 months ago from a tumor, so he's been the only dog for awhile. We think he's missed having her around, which is why he's enjoyed Cricket.

We know she's a puppy and will do puppy things, but she is everything we wanted. Thank you so much for rescuing her!