Both mother and son have settled down almost as though they had always lived here.  Muldoon (Pierre) is over-exhuberant (Dalmatian + puppy)! and Caridad (Eureka) is still fearful when anyone visits.  Muldoon has eaten a valuable copy of Paradise Lost which he selected from the bookshelf TWICE!  He also likes to remove silk flowers from their containers....because he is pretty big, he can easily lift things from the table or from countertops and seems to choose carefully to take the most unlikely items!.  Let's hope he grows out of this.  He knows that it is wrong but he cannot resist temptation

 Caridad has decided that her bed is underneath our bed and she curls up there every night most contentedly.  Muldoon sleeps in the living room and wakens me with his own built-in alarm clock at 6:45 every morning.  The two of them charge around the yard, chase away squirrles and rabbits, bark at the geese on the lake, then come in to ask for breakfast.  They have organized our lives!

They come out with me to the barn almost every day and get to run freely on the trails.  Caridad is the most independent and curious, while Muldoon likes to keep me within his sight most of the time.  He comes when he is called, she does if she feels like it.  Recently I started to take them with me when I ride my horse.  I was anxious about them bothering the horse, or she bothering them, or that they might not stay with me.  Amazingly, they seemed to know that Dals were bred to run with horses and that's exactly what they do!  They stay closer to me than when we are walking, they stay to the side and a little behind the horse.  They behave themselves perfectly!  To see them running out there is to see pure joy in a Dal.  They love it!

Valerie and Yeovil

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