This weekend my family decided to take a trip up to Maine to see an old family friend of ours. They have a seven-year-old chubby chocolate lab named Sammie. Gracie had never really interacted with another dog before, so this was a test for her and us, but we have certainly realized that our puppy really needs a playmate.

Us humans can play with her, throw her a ball, run up and down a field with her, and more, but it still does not seem to satisfy her enough as another dog does. Gracie loves to be chased. There were so many times when she would run up to Sammie and annoy him so much so that he would chase her. No matter how hard she tried, he did did not really want to play that game with her being the old pooch that he was. Sometimes he would give her a little bat and she would scamper back, smile, and run away. She absolutely loved that. There was another neighbor dog nearby who would come into the house some times and that dog did chase Gracie, so she did get the chasing in that she wanted.

She was absolutely obsessed with Sammie. She would jump all over him, sniff him, annoy him, and just follow him around everywhere. Luckily, Sammie loved the attention– he was a rock-star for the weekend. He loved having his girlfriend Gracie around and the two of them were always so sad when we separated them. Sammie even showed Gracie what she had to do to play Frisbee!

Sammie is such a great dog. Our friends place lies on the top of a hill and way far down at the bottom of the hill are the rocks that lead to the ocean. Well, we decided to take the speedboat past the house and when we saw him his owner exclaimed “Sammie!!”. Much to our surprise, by the time we had turned around to head back, Sammie had made it all the way down from the house, through the woods, and to the rocks. He totally would have jumped into the water had we called for him to do so.

Some day I bet Gracie will do that too. Now the trick would be to get her to get into the water.