Midnight Molly

Midnight Molly, a photo by bowtoo on Flickr.

When we came to America we had to leave our black labrador behind in Africa with a good friend. After settling in here, we decided to look for a similar dog. Unfortunately the labrador breed in America contains strains of mad-crazy ball-chasing varieties that were completely unexpected.

Our black lab in South Africa was "Skye" - a calm, good natured dog who would sit patiently outside and wait for us if we visited a friend and didn't bring her in with us. She loved fetching balls and sticks but was just as content to walk quietly beside us when stick or ball throwing were not on the agenda.

After settling in America we saw an advert from someone looking for a family to adopt a black lab and we arranged to be "interviewed" for the position. The dog seemed sweet and good natured but when a ball came into the picture all bets were off. She fixated on the ball and went crazy if you didn't throw it for her.

Against our better judgement we arranged to adopt Midnight Molly.

It took a week of constant walking to the beach and ignoring her to stop her barking crazily for the ball all the time (she does the crazy thing silently now) but we never cured her of the crazy need to chase the ball. We also gave up on giving her rides to place to walk because she did (and still does) moan, yip and bark all the way there. We took her on a camping excursion once (yes, once) in Maine. A three hour drive with a crazy barking, yipping, whining dog who remained crazily fixated on recreation throughout the entire camping trip was enough for a dog's lifetime.

The person we adopted her from mentioned casually as she walked out of the door (after dropping her off) that Molly had occassional epileptic fits. Turned out that was more or less once a week! We have since tried multiple diets and she seems to have them once a month.

So here is our crazy, epileptic, ball mad Midnight Molly - older, wiser, a little slower, but still quite crazy.

You couldn't tell, just from looking at her.