aana asks: Are you a boy or a girl? (Please say girl!)
Hi aana –
You’re so funny. Absolutely, I’m a girl.
I don’t have any puppies (and I can’t, because of an operation), but in every other regard, yes I’m fully female. Like other female dogs, I’m extremely protective (you do NOT want to walk into our yard uninvited!), and very nurturing of those I love. We wander less than most male dogs, and bark more.
But other than that, there’s really not much about me that comes off as feminine. I’m a great lover of very rough play, and exhaust most of the boy-dogs I meet at the parks. I play tug-of-war with Handsome till his shoulders ache, and beg for more. I even (don’t ask me why) lift my leg when I pee on trees – which is normally a boy-dog quality. Handsome likes to say “Shirelle has more testosterone than the Green Bay Packers,” which is a famous team in American football, with very big strong macho guys.
But again, deep down, I think as a girl. You’ll see that I get a lot of questions from teenage girls about their romantic issues, and I tend to just swoon at their love stories! I love all people and dogs, and want to jump on all of them, but my heart has always really gone to two males – my boyfriend Kuma (a Chow-Akita mix), and of course the great love of my life, Handsome, the most wonderful guy ever. (But who knows, I might fall for a girl sometime too; we dogs are very open-minded that way).
But my question back at YOU, aana, is why you say, “Please say girl!” Why does it matter? Is it that you think girls are smarter, or more trustworthy? Or is it just that you look at my picture and say “She’s waaaaay too pretty to be a boy!”
Thanks for the fun question!
Shirelle