Duma!

Meet Duma. Her name means "cheetah" in Swahili. Yes, I'm aware that a cheetah is a cat. But a cheetah is also awesome, like my dog, okay?

She was born April 7, 2008 (my dad's birthday too) in a litter of 10. She is a Lab mix, and, judging from her parents, likely mixed with Pit, Chow, and Border Collie. She is all black except for a tuft of white on her chest. But she has a brown sheen in the light in some spots, so she might be more of a brindle as she grows. Some of her brothers and sisters were brown with black markings.

I found Duma at the adopt-a-thon at the County Fairgrounds on June 1. A man had set up a pen with puppies in it and was giving them away for free. Incidentally, the dude looked a lot like Gerard Depardieu. He said that his roommate (the dogs owner) was going in for open-heart surgery soon and couldn't take care of them. I've been looking at dogs for a month now, going to the shelters, browsing petfinder.com...etc. But nothing clicked until Duma. She was really playful in the pen with the others, but was totally calm when anyone picked her up. All the puppies were that way. So I hung out for about 45 minutes playing with the puppies and making up my mind about taking one...and finally selected Duma! The other puppies were taken in by the shelters that were at the adopt-a-thon.

Duma was really shy when we put her on the grass to play away from the other puppies. She didn't run away, but kept looking around nervously. Eventually we got her to play a bit and she chased our feet when we ran.