Caitey's frends in the neighbourhood

There are 12 houses on our cul-de-sec street. If I have counted it right, there are 5 Chinese (2 just moved in), 3 Indian, and 4 Caucasian families. Well if you are yellow like me, you would not be color-blind to such things. It is interesting that by statistics, the racial makeup of our township is 85% white, 2% African American, and 12% Asian American. Somehow it seems like half of the Asian population in our town flocked to live on my street.

It is understandable because Asian families value education highly and our township happens to be one of the best school districts in the state. There are two things that people are not tired of mentioning here: 1) The Fed Governor Ben Bernanke lived in our town when he was teaching at Princeton University before he headed to Washington; 2) Our new state of the art high school cost us local tax payers mountains of property taxes while making our wallets as flat as pancakes. Since most of the district's education budget has gone to the high school, no wonder our elementary and middle schools are still using computers that look like the 1st generation IBM PCs.

Now back to merrier topic: dogs.

Perhaps because of the higher percentage of Asian (especially the Chinese) residents here in my block, we "only" have 4 dogs and a cat in our neighbourhood. No, I didn't mean that the Chinese have eaten all the other dogs, it is just in general we Chinese are more into kids than pets with our busy lives.

Right next to my house, there is a 6-year old white male Bichon Frise named Samoi. This little guy is very cute with a furry snow ball head that looks way too big for his small body. He might appear to be a little girlie at first, but once he starts barking you'd know how fierce he can be. No wonder this breed is used as watch dogs, I mean I doubt if an ant would be able to sneak out of his house. Not only that, Samoi seems to think that he is a lot bigger and taller than he really is, so he likes to challenge people as well as other bigger animals like deers. A brave little guy, he often wonders around fearlessly and gets himself lost often when he is not chained. One winter his parents had a tough time finding him in the snow with his white hair, thanks to his little dark nose he was finally spotted in the white blanket.

The first time he saw Caitey, the little guy jumped up and down, waved his tail fervently, and barked so loud that people in California could hear him. "Yeeeaaah, finally a girl friend of my size!". He wasted no time to sniff Caitey's private part and tried to mount her. My girls were watching this scene with their mouths wide open, and I ran out of hands trying to drag Caitey back and cover the girls' eyes at the same time -- after all at this age, they are only allowed to see things that are G-rated.

Caitey of course fell for Samoi as well. Once Samoi started barking just when she finished her business on the lawn. This naughty girl jumped up, ran to Samoi like a straight arrow and dragged my husband along with her. "Boyfriend, here I come!".

Another dog is Shadow, a black Labrador Retriever who is also 6-year old. She is very tall and elegant, just like her sporty and beautiful parents. She has this most gorgeous black coat that I have ever seen -- so shiny that a blind person could still see it in dark. Don't be fooled by her lean mean looks though, Shadow is a great lady -- calm, courteous, soft, and super tolerant to Caitey. The 1st time they met, Caitey ran straight to Shadow and jumped as high as she could to kiss her. Caitey probably thought Shadow was her doggie mom. As Caitey gets more hyped however, Shadow simply can't take it any more. Once after Caitey harassed her too much, she just turned around and ran straight back to the garage. Wow, a little puppy scared a big lab back home!

You would think Shadow has always been a tame dog, but her mom Lisa told me that during Shadow's puppy years, they almost gave her away because she was too much for them. Somehow I find it very hard to associate the super well-behaved Shadow with an annoying dog.

They say dogs get a lot calmer when they get older, well in that case I have hope for Caitey.

The only cat we have here around the block is a black one, who roams around the street like a ghost, especially when it gets dark. Her human sister, a 4th grader, is a sweet little girl who likes to crawl up on the trees a lot. At first I thought it was the cat's influence, but later she told me that she was mostly hiding from Shadow. "I need a dog like Caitey" she said, "Shadow scares me and drives me up on the trees!".

I guess dogs are like us humans, taking great pleasure in bullying the weak.