No matter how bad my day has been, it puts a smile on my face every time.
Having somebody so glad to see you when you get home their whole rear end waggles.
I just can't believe it took me 35 years to discover this is just one of the great things about owning a dog.
Coming home to a bag of concrete strewn over the backyard - lucky it didn't rain that day - or trying to wash the aroma of rotten possum out of dog fur are some of the others.
Lucy, a black and white collie-spaniel cross, exploded into our lives six months ago as a skinny bundle of pent-up energy from the SPCA.
She was my first dog.
As a little girl, I had always longed to have a dog.
I read books about dog training and dog classics such as Jack London's Call of the Wild and the story of Greyfriars Bobby, but even though we had fish, budgies, guinea pigs, mice, cats and even horses as pets, dogs were not allowed.
Finally, after debating the pros and cons of having a dog with my husband for the past three years, we decided to visit the SPCA kennels "just for a look".
I have to admit, Lucy, then named Kay, did not immediately appeal.
She ran around her kennel, chewing on an old rugby ball and barking at other dogs, but apart from a brief sniff through the wire was not interested in us at all.
She just did not fit with the dog in my imagination, who stared up at us with huge, sad eyes and a look that begged us to rescue her and take her home.
But she did have a long, fluffy tail and was a nice size, not small and not big.
We wondered if dogs were like boats and if it would be bad luck to change her name?By the end of our first walk together I had convinced myself she was the one.
And after hearing her story, motherly instincts kicked in and I was determined to take her home.
Lucy had been left in a house for two and a-half weeks with no food or water, and arrived at the SPCA a bag of bones.
It took six weeks of feeding up before she was deemed well enough to go into the adoption kennels.
It was probably not the best way to choose a dog, but everybody who had to endure an endless parade of Lucy photographs on my cellphone agreed she did look cute.
Having chosen the dog, next came step two.
Building a fence and the discovery that getting a dog is not a cheap undertaking.
Nearly $1000 later and several weekends of digging holes, concreting, hammering and battling with chicken wire, the back yard was declared dog-proof and ready for its new inhabitant.
We celebrated with an orgy of more spending, visiting every pet shop in Dunedin as we picked out the best dog bed in town.
We bought every possible kind of grooming brush and argued whether Lucy would like chewy toys, cuddly toys or squeaky toys, before getting one of each.
The day she came home, I rushed to the pet shop to buy treats, but she was far more interested in exploring the house.
She christened her new home with a poo in the spare room and then promptly destroyed the cuddly, squeaky duck I had spent half an hour choosing, taking barely five minutes to strew its stuffing across the lounge floor.
We didn't get upset about the poo, after all if she had been abandoned in a house for two weeks she probably thought it was all right to do her business inside.
And we realised we had brought a chewer into our home.
Gumboots, jandals and even mobile phone chargers fell prey until we discovered a cure - an endless supply of chewy, rawhide bones.
The first day we both had to go to work we discovered the "dog-proof" yard was not actually as secure as we thought.
It took two days to discover her escape route - wiggling along underneath the house.
We blocked it off, but if you can't go under, you go over, and a day later she was running riot around the neighbourhood again, after having jumped up on top of the lean-to and run along the roof to get out.
The next new experience was puppy classes, and although Lucy was the oldest dog in the class and at 18 months not really a puppy at all, she failed her first lesson in style.
The instructor led each dog across the room and around a corner, and the owner then had to call it back. Every other dog ran with puppy-like joy and abandon towards their owner, but not Lucy.
All the lovely doggy smells she wanted to investigate were far more appealing than her new owners.
Thankfully, things improved from there, although she still sometimes seems to think "Come, Lucy" means run away in the opposite direction, preferably to the dirtiest, smelliest ditch she can find, so she can roll around in ecstasy while staring back at you with a "What were you saying?" look on her face.
And while she now sits, stands and sometimes heels, there are still some things we're not sure how to tackle, such as her propensity for having her bottom immerged while she does her business.
Every time we go to the beach she always runs into the sea to have a poo, which is impossible to pick up and not a good look when there are swimmers about.
If you have any suggestions, please email edith.schofield@odt.co.nz
