Woody arrived September 27, 2014 at 6:15 in the evening after spending 10 hours coming from Boise in cargo with a layover in Houston.
Ralph (my husband) had sent one of his undershirts to the breeder to travel in the crate with Woody. So Woody recognized Ralph’s smell through the crate door before we even opened it and knew he had arrived in a familiar world.
Here is a picture I took of Woody with Ralph sitting in the “pet relief area” at LaGuardia.
Soon Woody was running around looking at the area. We decided he is a research dog. We also think he is very affectionate and even keeled — the two traits the breeder told us she has been selecting for during the last fifty —years.
We drove home and had a calm night. Woody was in his crate in the upper kitchen (crate door open)and with the steps out of the upper kitchen blocked by a baby gate. We carried the baby analogy further by listening in to the upper kitchen from our bedroom over a baby monitoring system.
This morning we visited our Chappaqua green market. Woody met at least 10 dogs — ranging from 7 lbs to a 120 lb Bernese mountain giant. Woody was interested in them all! He didn’t seem at all afraid of any of them, we were surprised and pleased.
This afternoon we dined outside at our restaurant, Jardin du Roi on King street in Chappaqua. These pictures were taken there.
Of all the wonderful exchanges that we had today, and that wouldn’t have happened without Woody, the best was one we had with a little girl who said “Your dog likes to be stroked behind his ears.” Lilian asked her how she knew and she replied “because he relaxes when I stroke him there”. This from a seven year old girl.
I think we will learn about the world and people and ourselves with this dog.
XO Lilian and Ralph
Lilian Wu 