“Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.”

Daisy joined our family a year ago today.

After some months grieving our dog, Grace, Dennise and me had agreed that “sometime after the first of the year” would be a good time to look for a new one.

After twenty years, I should have known this literally meant January 2nd, as soon as the doors were open.

Dennise told Maria and me  she would trust our judgement, and that she’d love any dog we brought home. So, we headed down to the main SPCA shelter that afternoon.

Daisy, we were told, had been brought in with two siblings who have been found “by the side of the road.”

When we first saw her, she was incredibly shy, thin, and afraid. She cowered in one corner of the room, and it took twenty minutes of trust-building for her to let us sit near her, much less pet her.

Somehow, as shy as she was, we thought she was incredibly cute. There was something about her that said “she’s the one.”

Here’s the very first picture we took of her within minutes of first meeting her.

You can almost sense the fear in this shot.

Even when we got her home that night, she really wouldn’t come to any of us. She spent most of that evening cowering under the dining room table.

Within a few days, she had warmed up, at least to us. But, frankly, she spent months and months afraid of anyone besides us…other people, other dogs.

By Spring Break, she’d warmed up to a few of Maria’s friends. By late summer, she loved my parents. But she was still desperately afraid of other dogs. We’d take her to the dog park, and she’d cower under our legs, despite the fact that she’s a pretty big and stocky dog herself.

Last week, we were at the lakehouse with our family. She’s grown to really love the lakehouse. As we do. Just about every day we were there, she got a chance to run around the yard with her “dog cousin,” Luke. And this is what it looked like…

In her entire first year, she’s never played with another dog like this. Needless to say, it made us really happy.

It’s taken a year to get to this point, but it’s been a good first-year with Daisy.