Sassy the Neighborhood Magnet And Diet Secret

Everyone knows Sassy now. Every walk draws smiles from the neighbors and requests from the children to pet her. Sassy wiggles with delight as she meets each person on the sidewalk. If she is off her leash, she heads for the nearest person. Children think they are being bitten by Sassy, so I go over to explain her herding tactics and gentleness.

Adults grin at Sassy and call her "Sweetheart."

We got Sassy for two reasons. I really missed our Cattle Dog Sackett, and I wanted to be encouraged to walk every day.

Sassy is not a one-person dog, as most Cattle Dogs are. She loves everyone and knows how to charm each person. She is a bundle of energy, typical of Cattle Dogs, crazy to go for walks and ball chasing.

Sassy insists on a daily walk, which has helped in losing 14 pounds so far. When she approaches the park where we toss the blue ball, she is more of a Siberian Husky tryinig to win at Iditerod.

She interprets every movement as her constitutional right to go outside, so we often go out on the driveway for supplemental ball-tossing.

Sassy has the Cattle Dog look of, "You must be kidding!" One man said he would never own another one because the dog outfoxed him so much. When I usher all three dogs outside, Sassy stops and looks back, "That doesn't include me, does it?" When I urge her outside, she stops a second time, "There must be a mistake."

I get the same thing while ball-tossing. I kicked the ball down the street for a long chase. (We have very little traffic on our quiet street and cars are especially careful around the pets and children there.) Sassy saw the blue ball receding from her, not slowing down, and walked back to me. "Not my job description." We had to walk down the block and get the ball back.

We still have some debates about her role. Overall she is very precise about getting the ball back to the tip of my toes, often from a fast roll. She charges at me in the park, delighted with her catch, letting go of the ball just in time for it to stop at my feet. At other times she breaks her concentration with some sniffing around and runs back to me without the ball. We go back and forth about her fetching duties, but I walk back with her to find the ball.

The best part of the walk is the muttering warm-up. She has a series of sounds that show her ecstasy at going to the park, as I wrote before.