Big Daddy Keeway

Now that we have two Lab pups staying with us, quite a remarkable change has come over Keeway. Remember I said he's not a morning dog? Well, now he will have a little rassling match with the pups in the morning. Not much, but more than he's ever done before. The Lab puppies begin their serious rassling as soon as they wake up, which around here is about 5:30AM. If you don't know Labs, which fortunately we do, you might think they were actually having a bit of a fight. They're really not, they just play rough and get really excited. It doesn't last long, because they get tired quickly. But Lab puppies just play rough and big Labs, oh baby, when big Labs play it sounds like two Grizzly bears in a death match. Keeway and his 130 pound girlfriend, who you can see in the picture at the top of the blog, used to have the wildest romps in the backyard. She was bigger than him, but not nearly as strong, so if he got a hold of her, he could fling her around like a rag doll. She quickly learned to use her sheer size, charging him at full speed and knocking him down or flipping him high into the air (oh, if I only had a video of that, I know I could have gotten it on one of those "funniest whatever shows.") When Ellie learned the "chop block move" lowering her head and shoulder just a second before full impact, Keeway did go flying up in the air. He was disoriented for a couple of seconds which allowed Ellie to take a couple of victory laps, tail wagging, staring right at Keeway the whole time. Oh man, that was funny! The growling and snarling was loud, really loud (happy sounds for Labs, kind of like a big WHOOO HAAAA for dogs) . We actually had a neighbor come by one day to tell us they thought that they heard wild animals fighting and did we know anything about it? We just pointed to the two big Labs romping in the backyard and the neighbor just completely, totally cracked up laughing "Oh, ha! ha! Labradors! - have a nice day" and they drove off laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes! After that, we made sure we never took them both out too early in the morning. Ellie has since moved to Manhattan, and Keeway still misses her terribly. In fact, we have learned to never say her name because he still becomes visibly upset. And some people still say dogs (and other animals) don't have emotions. For all of you reading my blog, you KNOW that's not true.