Introducing.....Luna

by Susan Rozmiarek
If you wander through our new rural neighborhood, one of the things you’re sure to notice is that just about every house has at least two dogs, often three. At least one of them is usually the size of a small pony. I pointed this out to Ed and informed him that we would never fit into the neighborhood if we remained a one dog family. I don’t think he bought it, but I must have caught him in a good mood because he merely rolled his eyes at me. I, of course, took that as a “yes.”

After two months of looking and turning away many cute, sad faces, I found this rather plain, thin dog languishing in a back kennel of the Williamson County Humane Society. She’d been there almost two months and I’d somehow missed her on several visits. After taking her out and spending some time with her, I had to have her. At about one year old, she is a bit younger than I wanted. She still has plenty of puppy mischief in her, which I was trying to avoid. Still, she is so sweet and playful that it’s hard to be too mad at her, even as she is prancing around with my garden glove in her mouth.

Luna seems to have some Australian Shepherd and possibly German Shepherd in her.

I made the mistake of soliciting opinions from the boys as to what to name her. Their top two names were “Zelda” and “Yuna,” both characters in video games. Blech. I compromised and named her Luna, which I believe is a character in one of the Harry Potter books. The kids complained that “Luna” is hard to say. This puzzled me until I realized that even after 5 years of speech therapy for both boys, the “L” sound does not come easily to either one. In sadistic parental fashion, I said “tough – it’ll be good practice for you.” So, Luna it is.

Chase, our grumpy, older Australian Shepherd, put her in her place right away. After almost a week, they now seem to be getting along pretty well, except when Luna runs alongside Chase and tries to steal his tennis ball from right out of his mouth. He growls but can’t snap at her because he knows he’ll drop the ball and she’ll steal it. Poor Luna; I don’t know what her past was like. She doesn’t really know how to play but Chase is quickly showing her the ropes. She actually retrieved a tennis ball and brought it back to me for the first time today.

Chase and Luna