Just a quick update on Dollie.  We have changed her name to "Mattie",
mainly because of your story about how she was so badly matted when she
was rescued that she couldn’t walk.  I hope you don’t mind.  She went to
the beauty parlor today.  Here are a few pictures of the results.

She is doing very well.  We took her to the vet soon after she arrived
and she had a clean bill of health except for an ear infection.  That
seems to be better now though (after treatment).  She was shy at first
but now has bonded with all of us.   Her favorite is Rose, probably
because she is normally the person that feeds her.  She has taken over
every room in the house except for the bathroom.  For some reason she
won’t venture into there.

She loves to run outside in our back yard but for some reason she
doesn’t like putting her leash on when we go for walks.  She is fine
once we get the leash on and take her out though.  I wonder if she is
afraid that we’ll tie her up and lock her on the porch?  She isn’t one
for playing with toys or balls though.  Perhaps she never had the
opportunity and we’ll have to teach her how to play.

She is a good little dog.  She is very quiet, in fact we have only heard
her bark a few times when she is very excited.  She just loves attention
and always greets us at the door when we’ve been out.  She gets along
well with our cats and quite often sleeps on the same bed as them and
even has shared her food with them.  She is totally house trained and
hasn’t had an accident since we got her.  I think the only things we
have to work on is socializing with other dogs and teaching her to like
her life jacket..  She is fine with other dogs through a fence but
doesn’t seem to like being face to face without a fence between her and
them.  She even growled at our friend’s huge black lab.  She also hates
wearing her life jacket.  We’ll have to get her used to that so we can
take her on our boat soon.

All in all she is just what we wanted in a dog (once she gets used to
her life jacket)