His name was JJ, a West Highland terrier. We named him Joey but I took care of my young niece for a few years when he was a puppy and they were always together and she called him something like zayzay, sounded like JJ so he began to respond to that so we changed it to that.
This pic is an old school pic I had to take a picture of using my crappy digi, original pic was taken in 92 when he was about a year old. You can see his favorite blanket, one of many he had over the years.
He loved humans but did not like other dogs much. He freaked on cats, but the few cats that were tame enough to handle him loved him. He even befriended a mommy rabbit and it's young one summer who had burrowed a home near a big pine tree we had in our backyard.
His favorite snack was kraft cheese singles. He could be anywhere in the house and even carefully and quietly opening one he would hear it and come running. He was very possessive of food but more so his toys. He'd play with a person for a bit with his toys but he would always go off with it eventually and want to be alone with it.
We made the mistake of buying him a battery powered squirrel that would shake it's tail and kinda squirm every 15-20 seconds and make a chirpy sound. The first day he seemed to love it but I came home the second day of him having it and he was damn near at the batteries ready to chew em up. He was just going nuts trying to get to em, tore the poor squirrel apart, unrecognizable.
He loved snow but not ice. You could throw him in a snowbank and he would just disappear and explore for several minutes popping out of the snow many feet away from where he went in. Like many dogs when his paws got cold from ice he would lift one off the ground one at a time to warm em up, he never wanted to go back in the house though. He even began to paw at your legs when his paws were cold, not to signal to go in but to warm them up. It was almost always a struggle to get him back inside. When he was inside he spent most of his days laying in the sill of a bay window overlooking the back yard. Tons of wildlife at that house so he was constantly low growling, barking and running to different doors and windows to look out at people or animals. He even noticed birds and some larger bugs like dragonflys and butterflys, he would bark at them to.
He loved riding in cars of course, and knew the word park well. He would begin spinning in circles and yelping a distinctive happy yelp whenever we neared his favorite park which was a public park that had farm animals and dogs and cats, it's where he ran into most of his cat buddies.
His only enemy ever that I saw was this beautiful black lab that he just hated for some reason, he would charge and bark him at the park whenever he saw him. The lab's owner and I always laughed at this because it was just so strange and it always happened between the two.
He had a good 12 year life, ate a bit too much human food which probably cost him a few years on this earth and possibly caused his painful last days here. Was diagnosed with a tumor on stomach and bladder and once that was known his health went downhill very quickly. We put him down before he naturally passed because you don't want to remember your pet's last days as being long painful ones. His ashes are with my mother at her home because she took care of him most days the last half of his life when I was working on the road.
RIP JJ aka Joey
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