Lottie is my parents' dog. She is a pure-bred Shih Tzu, almost three years old, and 8.9 pounds, which makes her about as tiny as a Shih Tzu gets. It is entirely her fault that I wanted a dog in the first place.
As you can see, Lottie is black with white beard and paws, which is very rare. I have heard that in China, the black-on-white Shih Tzu is referred to as "Dark Clouds on Light Clouds" but I cannot find anything online to authenticate that.
(For comparison, Lola is a Lhasa-Poo -- a Lhasa Apso/Poodle -- weighing 13 pounds. Lhasas range from 12 to 18 pounds, according to the AKC, so I have a small one. Shih Tzu, however, range from 9 to 16 pounds, so Lottie is sort of abnormal. She was the runt of the litter. No one I've met has ever seen a Tzu so small.)
Lottie and Lola are cousins. This is a bit of a stretch, since Lottie is my parents' dog, and so technically Lottie and I would be sisters and Lottie would be Lola's aunt. I refuse to allow this. The damn dog may have taken over my parents' affections, but she is not a sibling. I hereby decree that she is one generation down from me.
Here is me with Lottie and Lola:
It is hard to take a picture of an all-black dog, so here is Lottie with Lottie's Mommy, against a white background:
Here is a close-up of Lottie and Lola:
Note that Lottie has two bows in her hair, to keep her bangs out of her eyes. She hates them, but they are adorable. I consider this to be a perfectly acceptable thing to do to small female dogs. If they didn't want to be accessorized, they should have been Rottweilers instead. I was hoping to grow out Lola's hair so I could do it to her as well, but I think it would only accentuate the missing eye, so I'll probably keep her the way she is.
Lottie has never had the chance to be friends with another doggie, whereas Lola has spent the last six months living at a doggie day care with twenty other little scruffbuckets. So initially, all Lola's overtures of "let's be friends and play!" (admittedly, some of those overtures took the form of barking and growling) were met with complete incomprehension, and a little fear. However, they've both settled down beautifully. They chase each other around the house and then fall asleep:
And finally, a gratuitous picture of my insanely adorable dog:
2 comments:
Hi Jess...I have a blog too, which I think you can get to if I leave you a comment. It's not very old, and I haven't posted much lately. But I will try to be better.
Also your dog is adorable. So is your parents' dog. But I might like your dog better because she only has one eye, and therefore more personality. At least, as far as I can tell from pictures :)
Hi Elliekins! Thanks for the link to your blog, I will follow it and make snarky comments :-)
They both have plenty of personality! But Lola's monovision makes her tilt her head to the side, and then her tongue hangs out to one side, and then I just melt.
So yeah, I like mine better. But don't tell my parents ;-)
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