A Day with Lupe

As anyone who knows me…I am not a “pet” person. I grew up with animals because of my sister, Kathy. Living on my own and raising Nikki, I never wanted a pet and Nikki never really asked for one. The closest we got to one was her turtle “Neon” which she won at a fair and surprisingly, lived much longer than they are known to.

Yesterday, I babysat Tom & Nikki’s dog, Lupe. I am used to little dogs…like Kathy’s Ginger… a cute, sweet and usually calm Shih-Tzu. She loves her "Aunt Esther".


Ginger

Lupe is a pitbull/jack terrier mix and he is excitable, curious and leggy but thinks he’s a lap dog.


Lupe

As soon as he saw me, he wanted to be all over me but we were in the car and he needed to stay put. But he tried. When he quieted down in the back seat, I drove to different stores to run my errands. He would look out the window either to the left or the right and you could see he was checking everything out. When I went into a store and took longer than 5 minutes, I came back to see him sitting regally in the driver’s seat as if he was ready to drive off.

At my home, he sniffed out everything he could but never knocked anything over which always amazes me. Oh wait...he did almost knock something over...me!


Lupe giving me some love

He knew his food was in the kitchen and he would wander in there and start moaning. Once or twice, he tried to jump up and grab the bag. Lupe is very expressive - you could just see he is always thinking and when he had been bad and I scolded him, he would look at me sideways, head and tail down, giving me a wide berth.

I got him some jerky treats which he apparently loved because he knew they were on the dinning table and his quest to get them was priority. But each time I caught him and he would have that guilty look in his eyes.

It was funny when he burrowed in a corner of my sofa and fell asleep between the cushions and pillows on his back with his legs straight up in the air. He loved being petted and scratched and massaged. He fell asleep again by my side as I rubbed his head and sides.


Zzzzzzzz

In essence, he was easy to care for if I was able to keep him occupied, like with a rawhide bone or the new toy I got him. But I still liked giving him back.
Tom said he asked for me in the morning...yeah...I knew he would miss me!


Lupe with his new Xmas toy