Lolly Belle Rose and her “necklace”

Lolly Belle Rose is an escape artist!  Since she was a tiny baby puppy, I have called her collar her “necklace”.  She, for the most part, enjoys wearing her necklace.  However, it must be removed for the dreaded bath day.  Lolly does not like baths but even more does not like to be dirty.  Getting a bath has always been a bit traumatic but she looks forward to putting her necklace on after her bath because it means she is totally dry and officially DONE with all the torment that it entails – getting wet, mama getting shampoo everywhere it should be and a few places it shouldn’t be, rinsing it all out, drying off, mama squeezing her paws in the towel to get the extra water out (an especial dislike of Queen Lolly’s!), clipping unsightly hair here, there and everywhere, and finally a blow dry.  After all of that, Lolly snatches her “good girl” cookie and jets away before I can catch her and do something else undignified to her personage!  So one day after we had finished a particularly arduous bath day ending with the putting on of the necklace, she disappeared for quite a while.  I wondered where she had gotten to but supposed she was either sulking somewhere or taking a nap after the ordeal.  To my surprise, she trots in after a good length of time, plops down in front of me to show me her “handiwork”.  She figured out how to unbuckle her necklace and came to show me what she had done!  She was very proud of herself!  I started chuckling and remembering back to when she was a tiny one and figured out how to unclip her leash from her collar by working it carefully between her paws and teeth.  She sat there proudly as if saying, “See, mama, I can do it MYself!”  At eleven and a half years old, she still plays and acts just like the puppy she was those many years ago.  My little minx that I adore!