~September 2002 - July 11, 2011

It just fit her, so we went with it.  Now that I think about it, it fit her especially well because she was mostly white, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time I came up with the name.

She just went by her name.

Probably around September 1, 2002.

We figured she was Akita with possibly some German Shepherd. Her DNA test results showed that German Shepherd was her predominant breed and she also had Akita and Afghan Hound ancestry. The Afghan Hound was a surprise and it sure didn't contribute anything to her appearance.

Lily was what most people would consider a fairly large dog. At about 90 pounds (40 kg), she was our largest dog after Finian, our Irish Wolfhound, died.

She was quite attractive and people who met her often complimented her on her appearance.  

For some time after we acquired Lily, we thought she was barkless.  As it turned out, her bark sounded very much like MacKenzie's, so when she was barking, we thought it was him.  She had a pretty average big-dog bark.  Her howl was quite nice, though not as classic as Spook's was.  In addition to the usual dog vocalizations, she made an odd growling/groaning sort of noise when she greeted people. This was often accompanied by stretching.

When Chris was on his way to work on September 1, 2003, he saw Lily by the side of the road a few miles from our house.  She was miles from any residence and was obviously lost, so he picked her up and brought her home.  We suspect someone had driven her out there and dumped her.  We did the usual lost dog posters and ad, but there was no response.

She didn't act like she'd been abused and even knew a few basic commands, but she was underweight and wasn't spayed, so someone had not been taking very good care of her.

That was a stellar weekend for us:  the day before, I'd found Molly Maguire.

Lily was very sociable and loved to meet people.  Like Finian, she enjoyed grabbing people's arms or hands in her mouth.  She was totally untrustworthy with the cats and other small animals, however, and could be quite aggressive with other dogs.  Luckily, she had sense enough not to mess with Finian and he actually liked her.

Before we acquired Lily, we'd only had male dogs.  For some silly reason, both of us thought a female dog would be more sensible and trouble-free than the males.  Lily quickly proved that theory wrong.  At first, she got into more trouble than any of the guys and was a bad influence on them to boot.  She had a nasty habit of digging under our fence - or encouraging Creedence to dig out - and gallivanting around the neighborhood, taking several other dogs with her.  We ended that problem by installing an electric fence.

Her behavior improved as she got older though, and despite everything, she was very obedient when people were around and would never think of being aggressive toward humans.

Rattlesnake bite, Alopecia X, and liver cancer. See details. 

Going for walks and playing with MacKenzie, Creedence, and Dmitri.  She also enjoyed getting sprayed by skunks - or at least I assume she enjoyed it, as it happened over a dozen times and she didn't seem to mind at all. 

Lily's best friends were MacKenzie ahd Creedence.  (Being Lily's friend was a mixed blessing, as she was very much on the bossy side.)  She used to pick on Brittany, but for some reason, after Geneva's untimely death, the two of them starting getting along much better. She surprised us by immediately liking and accepting Dmitri and Fiona.