Emily celebrates her second birthday this month. A sunbeam finds her as she awakes. Photo by Joe Kitchens.

Our newest Lab, Emily, has been with us for a year now and just celebrated her second birthday. As you can see, the camera loves her. And, she is cheerful and energetic.

Like all Labs, we have to keep her out of the cookie jar or she will put on weight, so half her supper is green beans.

Labs are “food motivated” (as if the rest of us were not). This trait makes Labs easy to train. Since graduating from her obedience class, Emily has become an easy keeper and her relentless stalking has kept the backyard squirrels sequestered in their tree world. They enjoy taunting her, of course-but only from the safety of a limb. Realizing they are out of reach, Emily ignores the birds at our feeder.

Now, as to what Emily’s routine is like. I can only report that she is an eager student of nature, relishes her daily grounds patrol and her interest in mining (she was an excavating machine for months) has declined along with the chipmunk population. When I accompany her outside, she wants to play chase and hide-and-go-seek. She dislikes all machines and retreats into the house when I crank up the lawn mower.

Discovering her hiding place (she has a favorite azalea bush she gets under), I make pretense of grabbing her and she runs away, circles the backyard at top speed and stops just out of sight, barely concealed behind another tree or shrub. Sometimes, she simply circles the yard in fourth gear, getting closer to me on each pass.

We walk her every day, but this consumes little of her strength or energy. It is mainly for our benefit-but Emily enjoys checking on all the other neighborhood dogs, especially her girlfriend “Bindi”, a black Labradoodle two doors up. These girls would rather wrestle with each other than eat and we can only allow them to horse around on leads.

Then there is” Freddie the Freeloader”, a self-possessed male cat that seems to drift from house to house in a lazy stroll, often lying on a warm stretch of concrete driveway. When Freddie sees Emily, he always walks over to say hello, careful not to get any closer than the length of Emily’s lead. Emily hunkers down. Freddie is unafraid. Emily shivers with eagerness, wanting to do what we can only imagine. A lunge at the end of her lead causes Freddie to shrug. Calmly Freddie strolls away nonchalantly.

At the Home Depot and Publix, everyone wants to stroke Emily-and she accepts these acts as if they were expressions of fealty being offered to royalty. Emily’s interest wanes as she realizes these strangers have no treats to offer.

Most of all, she simply enjoys the ride to and from- a mere twenty five mile round trip to the nearest store. Her head up like a periscope, she surveys the passing cars and countryside- and having had enough exposure for one day, grabs a quick nap on the way home. Easy keeper, as I said.

Does your Lab shed? Gee, I would never have guessed. We shelled out a pretty penny for a carpet shampoo machine. Soapy wet carpets! What will we discover next? We are teaching Emily to work the machine.