The original call for the transport for Giggles described her as this: Giggles is a soft, white, lady-like Sibe who loves everyone, whether 2-footed or 4-footed. On a side note, Giggles was also deaf.
They were certainly right about her being soft, white, and loving everyone. But "lady-like"? Well, this message came later: Giggles is not only hyper, but STRONG. One driver said she walked well on a leash but everyone else said she pulls. REALLY pulls. Pretty far from "lady-like," isn't it? They ended up buying the poor dog a prong collar. I wasn't too happy with that. I don't like using anything that causes pain to a dog, especially one as out of control as poor Giggles was.
Giggles was also advertised as a Siberian husky. We're pretty sure that is not the case. Siberians aren't really prone to deafness, nor to being all white. And her body and ears and face were just not Siberian-like. In looking at pictures, we're pretty sure she's either an Australian Cattle Dog or an Australian Cattle Dog mix of some sort.
Whatever she was, she was a nice dog. My first introduction to her was when she raced out of the car of the driver before us. She made a beeline for me, threw her ears back, and jumped up to greet me. As I bent down to her, she covered my face in kisses. She was an absolute sweetheart but full of a lot of pent-up energy. They walked her a bit and she proceeded to jump and pounce and try to chase the birds. Ok so no going to the bathroom that time!
The trip out to Herkimer started off with my worrying about keeping her out of things. She tried to chew on her tether a couple times but I kept her away. She tried to get into the front seat, but she didn't have enough room on the tether to get up there. She found a water bottle I hadn't removed from underneath my seat and she tried to eat that, but I got it away from her before there was water all over my car. After she paced a bit, panted with this horrible high-pitched noise (hey, she couldn't hear it!), and jumped on the windows a few times in an aborted attempt to get at something outside of the car, she finally settled down and alternately dozed off and just sat there looking out the window.
It turned out to be an easier trip than I expected, considering how the beginning of it went.
The handoff was done easily. I got her out and wandered around for a bit with her in the hopes she might need to pee. No such luck. She was again very distracted and sniffing everything. We got her up into the SUV for the next leg of the trip. She wasn't certain about jumping up into it, so we got her front feet up and then I lifted her from the butt end and helped her get in. Once there, she was a happy girl and ready to go.
I really adored this dog. She was incredibly sweet and the way her ears would go back just sconds before she jumped up on you was sweet. In some ways, those ears can become a good signal that she's going to jump and you can stop her before she even gets her feet off the floor. That ought to help her future people!
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