My Labrador

           

    Above is the picture of the furriest member of my family.  Melody is around thirty years old in dog years, and thus supposedly more mature than me based on age.  In my eyes, her personality is closely mimicked by that of a six-year old child.  I’ve explained this perspective to my parents, but they have reached the conclusion that she is still of higher maturity.  (At least I don’t directly ignore commands when I’m excited).  While her personality may certainly mirror a Charlie Brown-like character, her size is massive even for her breed. (72 pounds and counting) It is truly a child that is trapped within a giant.

While Melody is a Yellow Lab, her mother was chocolate, and her father was black. (Labradors exist in a variety of colors such as (yellow, chocolate, and black); as a result, unlike most yellow labs, her nose and eyes are colored light brown.  Melody truly lives up to the notion that Labradors are known to be energetic and love people.  Nevertheless, she did develop some individualistic habits not known to Labradors.  For example, her deeper devotion to my father rather than my mother or myself struck surprise within all of us.  My father was the person in our family who spent time with Melody the least, yet he managed to bond with her on a deeper scale than time.  Perhaps it was not the quantity of time spent, but the quality that made it up.  One of the most demonstrative moments was when my father went on a business trip for about three weeks.  When he came back, Melody went from sleeping lazily on the ground to hopping up and down and licking him.  Unfortunately, she was also very heavy and caused my dad to nearly fall backwards.  She however did not exhibit this behavior with me and my mother coming back from Korea for one month.

Adding on to her peculiar preferences, Melody also exhibits a sort of selective bilingual communication.  From a young age, Melody experienced training through commands in both Korean and English.  As a result, she has learned to respond to both languages, but not all commands.  For instance, if I say “come here”, she won’t understand and look at me blankly.  On the other hand, if I say the same phrase in Korean, she will respond accordingly.  (It’s very hard to notice that she understands, because she often ignores commands that she doesn’t accept)

Over the years, Melody has tasted a variety of treats: exotic fruits, vegetables, and biscuits.  Among these treat, sweet potato is by far her favorite.  It could be argued that every dog loves sweet potato, but this obsession with this particular treat was on a whole different level.  Normally, when my family cooks sweet potato, we bake them in the oven for 30 minutes.  Recently, when the sweet potatoes were put in the oven, Melody sat right in front of the oven for the time that they were being cooked. (All 30 minutes!)  Every time she sees anyone munching on a piece of sweet potato, she masks her face with something that is irresistible to rejection.  One night, Melody decided to dig through the trash in search of sweet potatoes.  Weeks later, we found sweet potato skins hidden underneath her bed.  Despite the trouble she may cause, I love my huge, childish, sweet potato-loving, and bilingual dog.

               I hope you enjoyed my piece on who Melody is.