Still no luck finding old pictures of her, but I did unearth the computer they might be in. Now I recall moving all the pictures from that computer to the joint hard drive, which, like everything joint except taxes, split asunder. As in "Let no man put asunder." A sad moment, and that's why I've lost all the pictures.
In her first year, Jenny Lind and I went to puppy training class. It was put on by the local community College, Columbia College. Columbia is across the Stanislaus River, in Tuolumne County, and the college is shared by the two counties, Calaveras and Tuolumne. The obedience training was a community class, and I think they are all gone now, because of the budget. It met in Murphys in Calaveras County, and the town I just moved from. The teacher was Karen, who runs Aloha Training and Boarding, also in Murphys. It was a group class, not all puppies, and Jenny Lind was among the younger dogs. She did quite well in her training, even with her distractedness, and her love of Karen, which led her to run to her whenever possible. She passed the course, and received an American Kennel Club Canine Good Citizen certification. This is more than just a piece of paper; some hotels require it if you want to bring your dog to stay. Out of that class, we formed a dog marching team for the Murphys Irish Days Parade in March. The music we marched to was "Who let the dogs out," and for years, Jenny Lind perked her ears up with she heard that song. We did a little dancing with our dogs, just some simple steps adapted to their being on leash, and we were on the front page of the local newsletter!
I signed up for the next session of the class, as much for socialization as training, but at one of the first classes, there was an incident between Jenny Lind and a German Shepherd. The Shepherd was a bit volatile, but Jenny Lind's reaction was a bit over the top. This was the first sign of trouble. The next sign was when she met her brother. She was in the car, and I opened the back hatch to let her out to greet him, and was astounded at the ferocity. I pushed her back in the car, and all was well, but still, it was odd. Very unlike her usual sunny nature.
Jenny Lind had a particular dog friend in the neighborhood, Annie. Annie had a bad reputation for roaming, destruction, other unnamed antisocial behaviour. Since I was used to having my dogs run free, I let Jenny Lind and Annie roam and play, and now I know that that was a mistake. Unfortunate though it is, in this society dogs need to be leashed. It's just a fact. The downside of this is that they aren't able to run their own dog society and socialization programs. They are attached to us by an umbilical cord that makes them an extension of us, of our moods, desires, and fears. Because I wasn't really leash trained, as owners need to be, Jenny Lind never felt the security that she needed.
We usually walked in the forest, and she had many dog friends there, and they were all off leash. It was a joy to seem them bounding through the underbrush, tumbling together, chasing each other, running together. There were also street dogs, a pack of them with their pack of owners. Two of these dogs were highly strung, and aggressive towards Jenny Lind, who responded in kind.
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