The Prairie Triplets: A Beagle Birthday

Yesterday was Molly's Birthday. As with all Birthday the kiddos wanted to know if we were going to have cake. While we didn't have any cake we did have some fun treats together.

Molly is 10 this year. It's really hard to believe she's that old. She still acts like a puppy a lot of the time although she doesn't usually chew up markers and she sleeps most of the day. We joke that she's part cat. She wanders around in the evening and spends her days looking for spots in the sunshine to sleep.

I have wanted a beagle as long as I could remember. Maybe it was all those years of reading Peanuts cartoons in the Sunday paper. I knew I wanted a girl puppy and I wanted her name to be Molly. When we got married we had a town house. It didn't have a yard and my new hubby didn't want to get a dog if we didn't have a yard.

When we moved to Boise I made sure our new house had a yard. We moved into our house the last week in September in 2000. I had been watching the papers for dogs for sale. One day there was an ad for beagles. We drove out to Kuna, a small town near Boise.

A high school girl had bred her family dogs as a 4-H project. The mother and father were both on site. And they were such sweet dogs. There was one girl puppy left when we got there. She snuggled right up to me. She was such a sweet, happy little dog. The girl had tears in her eyes as we took our new sweet Molly home with us.

This is one of the first pictures I have of her. She was absolutely adorable.

Even now as an old girl she's still pretty darn cute. We'd gone on a hike this spring and she kept getting stickers in her paws. I gave up trying to pull them all out every 2 seconds and just carried her.

We've had a lot of adventures over the years with Molly. For 5 years she was our "first" baby. When I was on bedrest she was my constant companion.

Little did she know the changes that awaited our home. This is a picture of her meeting Gabe on the day we brought him home. She was a bit apprehensive to say the least.

This is the day we finally brought Leona home. We had brought blankets home for her to smell but there is no way we could have prepared her for this.

She really wasn't very fond of the kids at first. I can't say I blame her. They were awfully loud. Molly has usually slept in our room. Sometimes on the end of our bed, sometimes on her bed on the floor.

When the kids were all first home I remember one night where we were trying to feed everyone around in the very early morning hours. It was very loud. Molly had been sleeping on our bed. She got up, glared at us, jumped off the bed and burrowed herself under our bed. That was her "fort" - her hiding place when she wanted to get away.

A few minutes later things still had not gotten any quieter. She came out from under the bed, glared at us again and trotted out of the room. We found her the next morning downstairs sleeping on the couch.

Things didn't get any better for Molly as Sam, Leona and Gabe got older. They got even more unpredictable. She never knew when they were going to pull an ear or her tail. But they sure loved her. Just look at Gabe's smile. And look at poor Molly trying to get away from him. She'd been sleeping on that blanket and he was so proud that he'd crept his way over to her.

It was often safer for everyone to see each other at a distance.

As they got older she started to discover some advantages to these 3 small people. They loved it when she gave them kisses and would laugh uncontrollably. Here's Gabe again.

We took SO many walks together. I'd pull the wagon and the beagle would pull me. This is from Halloween 2006.

Because of Molly I have one of my dearest friends in the world. Jen McMurphy still swears she bought the house next door to us because of the cute little beagle in the yard. Molly loves her Auntie Jen and Uncle Rob. They're part of her pack too.

Molly's fan club is almost as big as the kiddos. Sarah would often call me asking if she could come take Molly for a walk even when she wasn't house sitting Molly.

I think it's safe to say that of all the kids, Leona loves Molly. Maybe because she's just such an animal lover or maybe because if we count Molly we aren't outnumbered by stinky boys. Molly loves her so much too and will even indulge Leona with a small amount of dress up. Like bunny ears.

Or princess beads.

Molly loves Leona just as much as Leona loves her.

It's been a hard year for the little dog. She lived her whole life in our neighborhood. She's been on quite the adventure with us. She traveled cross-country.

She's a pretty good passenger too.

She's been happy at our new home. She's happy to have all of us living together again. When Doug was gone she'd often hear noises at night and go look for him. She missed going on a morning cruise with him.

She's had adventures at the farm. The other day I heard her barking like crazy. I came out of the house and I couldn't find her at all. I followed her leash before I started laughing like crazy...Notice anything in this picture???

Somehow she'd gotten herself stuck under the porch but couldn't figure out how to get herself out!

We are currently renting a place in South Dakota. It's really very nice but one of the few things I don't like is not having a fenced yard. There's plenty of open space and we've got a pretty good system set up with a nice long leash line. Somehow she manages to get herself wrapped up.

Then she's stuck.

And she just can't figure out how to walk back the other way and get herself UNstuck. Crazy dog.

She has a great sense of smell. Somehow a blue M&M had gotten itself way back in the corner between the fridge and the cabinets. She worked forever trying to get to that one little bite of heaven. She is persistent! I'm sure I can say that her favorite thing about the kids is the amount of food she's able to steal from them.

She'll wait patiently for them to give her a treat.

She's very gentle when she takes something from them. Even when it might not look like it!

Waiting patiently for a treat from Gabe.

She really loves the kids now. Every night she comes upstairs while we are putting the kids to bed. She loves to sit and read stories with us. She's a wonderful family dog.

Yesterday we picked out some goodies for her. Some new dog treats, dog bones and a little hedgehog. The kids keep bringing her the hedgehog to snuggle with. As you can see all she really wants are more treats.