Day 166 - Alsatian Wolf Dog

doggystyle

Sitting at my desk at home, whilst working, my eye fell upon this block of dog-themed post-it notes that I was given at Christmas.

It's one of those things that has been sitting on my desk for months and I've never really looked at it...funny how the mind tunes out things that are always there, only really noticing when something changes. 

For some reason, today it snuck into my attention zone, and I noticed that it has different dogs on each side, and on one side, curiously, it has the three breeds with which I'm most familiar.  

huge lab, or miniature alsatian and westie?

Of course Jazz and Bluez are Black Labrador Retrievers, all around brilliant dogs...although not quite as gigantic as pictured here - I think this is a Black Lab crossed with an elephant, judging by the size of the other two! 

Earlier in Jazz' and Bluez' lives, we often dog-sat for a couple of West Highland Terriers, Luci and Bear.  Luci (short for Lucifer!) was small, and reminiscent of the little westie in the photo.

Luci and Bluez were good friends...at least, he put up with her quite patiently, given she was such a little ball of high-octane energy...Bear was a very handsome, confident little chap, and he used to escape from Chez Balogne often.   They were great fun, very different from the labs.

I've known a few German Shepherd Dogs (GSDs) in my time.  Most notably, my hairdresser (back in the days when I both had hair, and got it cut) had a huge, brilliant GSD called Zack...and my friend Jezz was surrogate master of an equally brilliant GSD named Tarot, a few years ago.

See, they always have cool names, too!

Jezz is looking to get one soon, and I've long had my eye on them too. 

Apparently they used to be known as the Alsatian Wolf Dog, which is a great name.

I really like the white ones, I think they're just gorgeous, and the black ones are super-cool too, beautiful animals.

All-white and all-black, whilst not exactly common, are by no means rare...but in the UK any such pups get killed because they don't meet the breed standard...

(don't even get me started on the Kennel Club...they have a lot to answer for!)

Anyway, Kim would like a white one too, tho' I'm not sure it's an ideal breed for a first time dog owner. 

All that said, Anna has issues with GSDs, and they're not necessarily that reliable with cats, so I'm not seriously considering one...but if I had my druthers, a white (or black!) GSD would be high on my list.

I reckon we could do some kind of deal....

Maybe if Anna can have a donkey one day, then I could have, let's say, an Alsatian Wolf Dog?

;-)