My First Day

July 14, 2007: Today I came to live with the Hughes family. My name is Sheba and I am a black Labrador. I weigh 58 pounds and have big brown eyes. I arrived about 4:00PM with my foster leader with whom I lived about 10 months. I spent the first hour or so sniffing around the yard and checking out the house room by room. The pack leader (Carlton) was very anxious to play ball with me so we played about a half an hour. I’m not very good at giving up a ball that I worked hard to fetch, but he’s teaching me to share. The leader’s mate (Cheryl) went to buy food for all of us and when she returned I got to spend some time with her. She even fixed me a nice soft bed. I’m not afraid of much, but if I had to list my number one fear, it would be thunderstorms. (I don’t like the noise. I guess it comes from being chained outside all the time when I was a puppy.) Wouldn’t you know I was hardly in my new home when a storm came over. Fortunately, it wasn’t too severe and the leader patted me a lot to reassure me that I was safe. I had my first supper of kibble and Alpo…um, delicious! The leader checked out the commands I knew so far, like “sit,” “down” and coming to my name. He seemed pleased. When it got dark, the mate went to bed and the leader stayed up with me, but I got tired a little while later and found a nice, soft spot in the office and went to sleep. I think I’m going to like it here.