John MacK, Mattie's a very pretty dog, with that snow white blaze down her chest.

Our girl didn't look much like her Newf. father. People erroneously identified her as a Collie, a Golden Retriever, A Shepherd, but universally agreed with our assessment of her looks - she was just pretty.

The Newfoundland Dog in her came out when she hit the water. She was double coated and swam really high, with her back out. When anyone was swimming, she would patrol in front of them, presenting her thick tail over and over. If the person grabbed her tail, she would immediately swim to shore, pulling them along with her. No one taught her this trick.

We get water from our lake, and one day my husband was diving to clear weeds away from the intake. I came running out of the house because the poor girl was in howling, barking hysterics, running back and forth on the wharf, unable to tell where he was, thoroughly paniced. When he surfaced, she hit the water in a millisecond, took his arm in her mouth and was certainly planning on dragging him ashore, dead or alive. He got her calmed down, but she swam right against his body until he got out of the water.

She adored sticks, any size, and loved fetching them out of the water. A small eel got tangled in my husband's line while he was fishing one day, and it took a while for him to get the line off the frantically wiggling creature. Our girl was fascinated by this 'wiggly stick', and when he threw the eel into the water, she dove in and spent a really long time searching for it, occasionally giving husband reproachful glances. In fact, she looked for that wiggly stick off and on for days after the event.

Me too, Peace. Miss my dog and love hearing other people's dog stories. I'm the dogsitter of choice for several of my friends' dogs - I love having weekend doggie visitors.