Lily

Lily is growing up – six months old already. Her most endearing personality traits are her enthusiasm for anything tasty and her hound instincts. She’s a mooch and unlike other finicky doggie eaters we’ve known who hack up anything spicy, savoury, or heck, sometimes even toast, Lily seems to have guts of steel. 

Not that this is a good thing. I wish she was more discriminate. Because dachshunds have such long bodies, added weight is unusually hard on their backs so we want to keep her as slim and trim as possible. Nevertheless, she’s right there, under the table at mealtimes, especially when the boys are here, scooping up any tasty crumbs that come her way and begging for anything we might be inclined to share if she stares long and hard enough at it.

Outside she eats grass, flowers, mulch, twigs – anything she can wrap her lips around. This is not a good thing either, especially when combined with her hound instincts. She snuffles around in the grass, in the flower beds and under the trees. So far she’s come up with two dead mice and at least half a dozen dead sparrows. So far she hasn’t tried to eat them, but instead brings them to me. Blegh.

At first I wondered where the dead critters were coming from but soon realized that with the amount of bird feeders, and the amount of birds that visit over the winter, it stands to reason that the odd one would succumb to the cold or old age in our yard. The same with mice living under the mulch and also eating the bird seed. We didn’t know we had mice living nearby – I guess it’s okay if they don’t come in the house! The old and frozen ones crept under the bushes and expired and we were none the wiser. However, Lily sniffs out the bodies and makes a gift of them.

She also thinks she’d like to catch a live bird. Today, the baby sparrows from one of the birdhouses flew the coop. I’ve been expecting this to happen as I’ve been watching their little beaks get bigger and more impatient as the parent sparrows brought food.

Anyway, I didn’t realize they were out until this afternoon when Lily spotted a baby in the middle of the yard. I don’t know if she would have hurt it or picked it up and brought it to me because the mamma bird was right there, flapping and squawking around Lily’s head. Lily immediately took after her (that’s the point, right?) and followed her half way across the yard in the opposite direction while the baby bird jumped, flopped, flapped and scrambled to the safety of the nearest flower bed.

Later tonight, when Lily and I went out, she sniffed out every inch of the area she covered chasing the mother bird. She didn’t go the other way and look for the babies. The mamma did a good job. There are at least three baby sparrows and one baby robin hiding somewhere out there in the garden. I hope they learn to fly and fend for themselves soon before Lily realizes she’s been duped.