We absolutely love Snowy!!  She is so affectionate which has helped us heal from having to say goodbye to our previous rescue dogs (a Mal who crossed the rainbow bridge a year ago in August and then the following month our Akita-GSD cross–cancer sucks).   Snowy loves to cuddle in the evenings and sleeps in our room at night.  She’s most playful in the mornings (before 10am) and then sometimes again mid-evening, having several squeaky toys that we toss around the house for her to fetch or play chase (you can do a circle through our entry-kitchen-dining-living rooms–at least until you or her get dizzy).  We are still working on anxiety during car rides and acknowledge that she might not fully get over that (Sato, our Akita-GSD never did) and that’s okay.  We put seats down so she can get close to the front and I just found the natural calming treats we tried with Sato so we’ll try that next time.

She loves people but we watch her with young children because she makes a low rumbling sound (we call it purring) when she is happy, but then it can make it hard to tell when she has had enough and wants you to stop.  Our eldest (who was studying abroad in South Korea when we got Snowy) established a new procedure when we aren’t sure if Snowy’s still okay with the petting–we stop petting her, pull back a little bit, and ask her for her paw.  Petting resumes after she gives you her paw.  We’ve also been working on her “using her words” (a bark rather than rumbles).  She wasn’t very talkative when we first got her (unlike Rainey, our last Mal).  I can guess why, her voice is more ear splitting than our prior Mal, but we think it’s important for a Mal to feel free to Woo.

She still has a pretty high prey drive, but we are used to that from our previous dogs (I grew up with GSDs).  We back up to a green space with squirrels who are pretty wiley so that gives her some entertainment but mostly she prefers to be indoors which is just fine with us. Our back yard is on a hill and she loves racing around–even after a morning walk.  She is not a fan of the rain but she’s really good inside the house.  We had to have child locks on the cabinet with the garbage with our last Mal.  She is very content being the only dog and we are more than happy with that arrangement, too.  When people tell me we spoil her I say, “absolutely!”  We still set boundaries that we enforce, but there’s a reason she knows the sound of the cheese drawer opening.