Harlie was dumped into rescue for her 8th birthday. Her people, thru ignorance and stupidity, had taught her the behavior they were dumping her for. She was using the house as her potty area because every morning when they put her out to potty, they locked her out for the rest of the day. They worked from home, she knew they were in there and she wanted to be with them. She'd dig out and come sit at the front door. She learned to potty in the house rather than go outside, risking getting locked out. At night, they chained her in the kitchen.

All of her troubles started when they  either moved to this new house or remodeled the existing one. They had her since puppy hood and the new house was more important. She was obese and full of heartworms. It took me months to retrain her to go outside, she had to learn that in my house, I WANT my dogs in with me! Going potty did NOT get you locked out! Believe me, we had loads of fights about going outside, but in the end she learned to trust me in everything.

She barked at EVERY little noise outside. We worked on that as well and made great strides. I miss having to tell her to "be quiet, no one cares". She shed 28 pounds and became a new girl! Her HW were successfully treated.

Harlie had evidently never had toys of her own either, and as a result, she demanded all new toys and would actually stalk them when one of the other Dane had one that she wanted. Let it get set down for just a second and she was on it! She actually hid some of them from the other Danes!  She adored moving blankets also. She laid claim to everyone in my house. If some one was using one as a bed, she'd actually try and pull it out from under them if she wanted it! She drug those blankets around to where SHE wanted them, not where I wanted them. 

She would look at me with her cropped ears hanging sideways and smile! I always told her one day I would sew some bells on those ears, she looked so much like a court jester when she did that! Harlie was a character! She adored the attention we gave her, and soon became daddy's girl .When Murray came home from work, she'd grab her favorite toy, a huge stuffed turtle, and run to meet him. She adored him, and he adored her. She loved going up to our cabin in OK. She'd race around thru the woods and play till she dropped from exhaustion! Some days it was like she was a puppy all over again.

I would laugh and say she was on her 2nd puppy hood at age 9! She would have turned 10 on April 12th. I always thought I'd have her the longest, she had no arthritis or symptoms of HD. But she started limping one day, then started loosing her sight. We learned she was hemorrhaging behind her eyes, but why?
Within days we learned she had cancer, loads of it in her chest, lungs, stomach, spleen and maybe even her bones. There was no hope and she was loosing half her blood volume slowly. We agreed to help her to her final slumber and she passed quietly from this world on March 16th at 8:57pm. Murray and I were at her side. We always referred to her as our "beloved squeaky wheel". The silence in our home is deafening. 

I miss my court jester more than anything.