February 17th 2008 8:07 am
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A little background on Jenny...She is a 6-year-old English Jack Russell terrier, rabbit-footed, 11.5 pounds, broken coated, with white eyelashes that give her a perpetually sleepy, hooded look to her eyes.
We bought Jenny from a local breeder who had imported her lines from Ireland, a wonderful couple who truly loved their dogs and took excellent care of all of them. Jenny was one of the last to go and, to be honest, I didn't take to her at first. She was very shy, small, and cowered away from everything, unlike the other puppy who was climbing all over us, vying for our attention. Jenny huddled in the background and the breeder kept pointing out her attributes. The breeder also knew that we had had a previous American Jack Russell, a.k.a. Parson Russell terrier "Luke", who was a very dominant male, urinated everywhere, ran away and cost us over $2,000 in fines with our town, ran away once and was found a month later in a town 15 miles away, basically your worst case scenario with a Jack, he bit, he barked, he jumped on our children as infants. So, anyway, we knew we didn't want another dominant dog, but who isn't woo'ed by the puppy who scrambles for your attention? We were still in the mentality of "that puppy must love us!" instead of recognizing the dominant personality. The breeder knew this and steered us towards Jenny, the exact opposite. She pointed out her white eyelashes and said "makes you want to put a little mascara on there, doesn't it?, laughing. We decided to take a break and talk as a family. Ultimately, we decided on Jenny, whose price was $800 but the breeder discounted it to $600, as my hubbie used to hunt with this man. We took our little bundle of joy home. She shivered in my lap and hit her face between my arm and my side all the way. This was foreign territory to us, what to do with a puppy like this?
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