Valley

Her name comes from a contest we had two years ago. We didn't know that Ruby was pregnant with Valley until she started to slow down on the runs and lose focus. She also started getting fatter. Due to the running we did with Ruby, she only had one puppy and that was Valley. Jenn and I had a sort of name-the-puppy contest on our blog where we asked people to submit names for the puppy and the winning name would be hers. Since she was born on Valentines day, we had "Valley" suggested and when we put the names in a hat to draw out the winner this is what we pulled.

She is still very much a puppy. She is also quite big. Valley is the second largest dog in our yard (Hudson excluded); she is at least ten pounds heavier than all our dogs. Ordinarily, Valley is a great dog but she has a hard time keeping up with the faster dogs and she likes to think she is the boss of the dog yard which we don't allow. She is, however, great around people and a really good dog for people that come out to the house for a ride. Vally's difficulty in keeping up with the other dogs is that she hasn't yet learned the concept of energy conservation and works too hard off the start and saves none of her energy for later. She has very fast reflexes, though, because she managed to catch a robin mid-flight.