Hazy Daisy of Skylark

That was our dog's official name - Hazy Daisy of Skylark - though of course she was Daisy to us. In the picture, we're laughing because Daisy (age 9) walked into the living room and plopped down among us when we were taking a picture for the 1990 Christmas card.  Circling from the left:  Cindy (23), Kate (20), Dan, Diane, Lynn (24).  Her birthday is coming up on Jan. 29.

You're probably wondering when we got her - and where.  We have to go back to 1981 to find out....I didn't write in my diary regularly then. Sometimes there were gaps of months.

August 24, 1981 - Monday    "Monday has always been one of my best days for getting things done.  Here I am at 7 AM doing this instead. Must have been something to do with Daisy's being downstairs.  She's our 7-month-old ( Jan. 29) yellow Labrador retriever puppy, already about 60 lbs. & still growing.  She certainly has changed all of our lives.  

I drove up to Wisconsin (near Waukesha) to buy Daisy from Phyllis Putney in April during spring vacation, having called around the area & finding no puppy for sale closer.  I was very surprised at the size of Daisy even then.  The breeder told us she was 9 weeks old - didn't realize that she had her dates wrong.  Daisy was then 11 weeks."  Kate and Cindy, both on spring break, were with me on the drive to pick Daisy up.   Lynn was in high school at Fremd, which had a different vacation schedule back then.

"I think the first month would have been easier if we had had her at 7 or 8 weeks old.  We had some difficulty house-breaking her - and especially at night.  She pooped in her cage - in great volume - every night.

Daisy is a beautiful animal - white with a little tawny golden hair on her back and some tan on her ears.  However, she's hard to handle because of her size and is not all that absorbed with trying to please the humans around her.  She has improved greatly, but is still more work than I'd bargained for.

I hear her rattling her cage even as I write this.  Yesterday our family project was to work on Daisy's doghouse & run.  We built a doghouse, which stands 4 ft. high, and also tried to level the run, which we had built last spring & filled with cement blocks for flooring."

I went on to say that the adjustment to having Daisy was more of a strain than I had thought it would be. The 3 girls were about to go back to school, so I would be the main caretaker again.  Eventually Daisy became so much a part of the family that it was hard to imagine us without her.

I'd had a torn ligament in my knee from a McDonald's golf/tennis outing in July.  While we were warming up, my opponent hit a ball way to the back of my court.  I didn't realize I was backing up into a puddle of water! Had missed 3 weeks of golf and tennis because of the injury & was wearing a brace temporarily.