I bet my Maggie is more embarrassed than I am about the picture.  There she is, scooped up in my arms, legs akimbo and face straining to be noticed by her dad.  And me?  I’m just her mother, holding her little girl….all 65 pounds worth of dog at nine months of age.

Sixty five pounds of dog?  Being held in the arms of her mother?  That was her issue back then.  She had just passed puppy hood and I was not yet acknowledging that she was a “grown woman.”  It had been less than a year when we found her in a shelter less than nine pounds in weight and height?  Who knows.

She chose us.  When allowed out of her crate, she shared with two siblings, she ran for me.  I noticed that she had set her eyes on me from the start.  I picked her up without knowing if she was a male or female, because it just didn’t matter.  We knew we belonged to each other from first glance. 

I had already agreed to adopt her before I even thought to turn her body around so that I could learn her gender.  And she became my first girl dog….all the other dogs we had raised had been male.  And you know?  It didn’t matter.  I loved her at first sight.

It’s been that way ever since.  Even though she is even larger than the little lamb you see in the picture, we still cuddle all the time--her on my lap with my arms wrapped around her to keep her there. 

She’s Maggie: My seventy pound mixed-breed hound child.  She is the sixth dog we have raised, third daughter of ours.

And although we may look silly, and perhaps I should be embarrassed, I love hugging my Maggie, my girl, the rescued mutt who never knew she lived any other way than as the coddled, adored and nurtured little woman who made it out of the pound.