My dog

Back in the mid-90's I got this little Australian Shepherd puppy, her parents were tri-red, both of them, but she was tri-black mostly with slotches of blue merle coloring, her face was 1/2 and 1/2. She had a great big budda belly, which had spots all over it. She liked to sleep on her back so when we first got her mostly we saw a big spotted belly, that's how her name ended up being Belly. Belly had lots of energy, she loved to ride in the car, and she loved water. I learned after having a bad day, when she was trying to get a "forced pet" out of me, by trying to nudge her head under my hand, when I had my head in my hands, and said not right now Belly, go outside...and she turned around and walked outside, that she also knew English, lol. Who knew! She picked up on people's names easily, when i told her, go see Patrick, she'd turn around and go to Patrick (my son), or go see Justin, she'd go to Justin (my other son). It turns out with all her happy go lucky, leaping personality, she was fiercely protective too. When my boys played and wrestled around she nipped at Justins ankles, when Justin and I wrestled around she nipped at Justin's ankles, when Patrick and I wrestled around she nipped at mine. She didn't like us being rough.

One night when my friend and I were in the hot tub, we called it making people soup, since there were mountain lions in the hills behind my house, and I assumed that's what it looked like to them, that Belly also loved Baileys Irish Cream, we'd make mudslides, jump in the hot tub, and we noticed (after a few incidents) that Belly rountinely (and I think purposely), knocked over each of our drinks, and would lick up whatever spilled, then she'd lay on the first step of the hot tub, half in the water, and relax with us. We put an end to that one night when we went inside and Belly tried to jump on the bed, and mis calculated smacking into the side of the bed and falling on the floor, then kinda staggered into the corner and whined for about 15 minutes (I assume she had head spins). No more alcohol for Belly after that.

My sons liked cats, I got them each a cat, one masked tabby that was yellow that Justin named Fear, and a black and white one we picked up at a rescue named Batman (cause they told us Batman was a boy), Fear took a liking to Belly and proceeded to torture her. She's wait till Belly was sleeping stalk her, then pounce on her head, and run, Belly of course would wake up and chase, this went on for a couple of years until we lost Fear. Batman was the hunter, she brought home, birds, rabbit legs, 6 inch long "crocodiles" ok lizards but they looked like crocodiles, she even got in my room one night and leapt approximately 2 feet to my hanging bird cage and pulled one of our finches out of the cage through the bars and we never saw it again. Belly patiently watched out cats antics and never hurt them.

I decided one day, that the boys the dog and I needed a boat. So I bought a 19" Reinell, and we spent lots of weekends at Kings river, and going for day trips on the weekend to Lake Piru. That's when we learned the herding dog came with herding instinct built in, and they were going to herd you and anything else they could herd whether they were trained to or not. We'd dive off the boat and swim around, Belly would dive in with me, and when I got out, she'd get out. Then we got too close to shore and she spotted the cow on the shore, and she promptly dove off the boat and tried to herd the cows, we had to grab her and put her on the boat and quickly get away from the shore. We never convinced her that she didn't need to herd them. We just stayed away from them, if we got kind of close her attention perked up and we immediatey back away. I guess she needed to herd something because there were several times a number of us were on the boat and found ourselves all squished into a corner before we realized Belly had rounded us up. She was a character.