I'm Not Scared!

I am just enjoying finding all kinds of old pictures that bring back so many good memories! A couple of months ago my brother, Jeffrey posted this picture of us when we were young....we used this picture for a Christmas card....with our Rottweiler Yogi. Yogi was a great dog, but a lot of people were scared of him because he was so big....and maybe a little overzealous! As my cousin John put it, "I remember Yogi grabbed me by my coat hood one winter and almost strangled me. Now I see why he was so angry. You were strangling him with your beast love all the time :)" It's true that if you tried to leave the backyard Yogi would nip at your ankles or grab you by your coat hood to try to get you to stay....he never tried to hurt anyone, though! Despite telling my cousins this, I think Melissa spent the better part of her childhood on the top of the monkey bars if Yogi was out of his kennel! There was NO WAY she was going to take a chance that he might nip at her! Not only did we have a big dog in Yogi, but my grandparents always had Doberman's that "took care of us" while we were out there. One of their Doberman's wouldn't even let bees get close to us...he would nip them out of the air in order to protect us from them!

So, my dad has always loved BIG dogs and back in 2001 he got Bear for Lynn. Bear is part Rottweiler and part German Shepherd (I believe), but he is a BIG BABY!! He really is a good dog, and some of the funniest memories I have from when Annalisa was little are those of her feeding him. She would put the dog biscuit in her mouth and Bear would take it from her mouth....she had NO fear of him even though he was like 10 times her size! (Now, what kind of mother lets her 1 year old child hold a dog biscuit in her mouth so a HUGE dog can get it from her and hopefully not bite her in the process???) Annalisa also used to walk around the house with Bear while he held her hand in his mouth....he never bit her, just led her around. Because we lived with Bear while Annalisa was sooo young (it was right after Ben's accident and we had to be in Dallas for 4 months while he was recovering), she developed a great bond with him that still holds to this day! Here they are together last year...still BFF'S!