my daughter Brooke's dog........

we are babysitting Brooke's (and carlos') dog for a couple of days - so...i thought of writing about him.

so, this is "gracie" who is a boy dog.  she called him "gracie" because he isn't graceful.

gracie is pitbull that my daughter found running around the LA freeway jumping from car to car begging for food.  don't worry, the freeway in LA was doing its usual thing - totally stopped - jammed --not moving.  it was rush hour.  anyway, brooke took in gracie and drove him around town looking for his home, a posted sign or anything.  she saw that he was actually a part of a dumped litter.  he was very skinny and very needy, but sweet.  she took him home and put out a bulletin looking for the owner - nothing.  probably he and his siblings was left out on the freeway as many dogs are - sadly.

brooke, at the time, worked in LA at KNX radio station as a reporter.  so, she looked for stories about the dog - no go.  she wrote a story about the dog or dumped dogs in general - no one claimed him.

brooke  lived in san diego and worked in LA - this meant she traveled daily from san diego to LA and back to san diego again.   that was a lot of time in the car.  and a bit, well, of a hellish commute.

because she was traveling back and forth working fulltime - she could not care for the dog.  so i (well, we - ok, mostly my husband) did.  in fact, we had gracie for over a year.  then brooke finally took gracie home and she and her boyfriend managed to care for him (did a great job too) - eventually she quit her job and stayed here in san diego to pursue a happier lifestyle.  (which is going well - thanks).

we did not train gracie because we believed we were just babysitting him -you know "not our dog".   as time went on he became a little unmanageable.   he was a holy terror, actually.  his insistent barking and jumping at our gate got noticed by the neighborhood.   they began to hate him after he got out of the gate and chased a lady with her tiny yapping dog up the hill and atop a parked car.  (they have no sense of humor---- apparently).

the neighborhood drama continued and, in fact,  still, to this day, is over him.  the lady who lives across the street is a PE teacher.... plenty of  mornings she has used her "bull horn" to announce that our dog woke her up.  (yeah, well, she woke up the rest of the neighborhood with her fricken mouth.  and she was so wrong because taz was in the house - she assumed it was our dog, if it was any dog at all).

heavy sigh.  neighbors.

we found it hard to call a boy dog gracie, so over time, we changed his name to "taz" for tasmanian devil.  it was during this time that i painted his picture.  notice the chaos around him.  yep, that's him.

today he is a fat old dog - looks more like a potbellied pig than dog and doesn't have much "chase" left in him.   he is very content and peaceful and is not in the least bothered with even our cat.

too bad our neighbors have not stopped hating him.   or is it us?

every once in a while i allow taz/gracie outside to bark just to level the field -so to speak.  he is so old now i have to coax and encourage him to bark - really he doesn't care.

i am glad that i captured him in his youth - time does fly, doesn't it?