Who's Luci's Mama?

Luci is rolled up in my blanket like a burrito. All I can see are her eyes and the top of her head.  

She weighs 10 pounds. Imagine being in bed with someone 15 times bigger than you and not worry that she could roll over and crush you.  Yet, she sleeps as close to me as she can. 

When she's sound asleep, I can pick her up and plop her anywhere on the bed, in any position, and she'll stay exactly where I put her like a stuffed animal.  Sometimes in a dream, she'll growl a muffled growl, scaring some imaginary monster that only she can see. 

If someone knocked on the door right now, she'd spring into action and run, barking.  If she recognized the person through the glass, she'd whimper and wag her tail, Wake up, it's our friend!

After saving the day, little guard dog returns to her warm position on the bed.  But first she flashes what I'd call a triumphant look in her eyes: I did my job, I did my job, I saved us from danger!

When I watch a movie in bed, she burrows under the covers all the way and snuggles up against my leg.  She doesn't care for lights on when it's sleep time. 

Luci is generally obedient, but she takes her own sweet time. She's an independent girl, she has to think it over.  If she's having a good nap under my driver's seat in the car, she prefers to stay put and I have to pull her out. 

She loves to run so much that if a runner happened to be passing, she wouldn't be able to resist the chase and could get hit by a truck. As chill as she is with me, she can go from zero to a hundred in a flash when she and Carma chase each other around Carma's yard. 

I wonder about her mama every day.  I wonder what mama dog looked like. Was she big?  Was Luci the runt of the litter and she loved her most for being so little? Her mama must have doted on her because Luci loves affection--licking (her me not the reverse) and tummy rubs (me her). 

Being separated from her mama and sisters and brothers was probably traumatic, and she never wants to be left alone again.  When I leave her home alone for a couple of hours, Jan says she sits in the window and howls pitifully the whole time. She only has me and she doesn't have language to understand when I tell her "I'll be back."  

I've never heard her howl. 

When I return, she greets me with unabashed adoration, relief, and happiness, jumping all over me. 

In the first thirty years of my Texas life, we had lots of dogs, usually dogs dropped off or lost who found their way to our door.  Not being a universal dog lover, I didn't love them all the same.  But the ones I loved most I eventually had to grieve longest when they died. I'll never forget a single one of them--Tony, Sasha, Black, Cookie, Pollo, Ivan....

Luci to me is not entirely dog. She's my baby, my companion, my daily source of laughter.  

If she went missing for two hours--as I do when I get in my car and go someplace she can't go--I'd do my human version of howling at the window.  When she came back, I'd do a rip-roaring happy dance like she does.