Oreo Hair (or, Annie's Adoring Fan Club)

This is Annie the dog, from a hiking trip last year.
She is very large and very black and very fierce-looking. Coyotes, cats, lizards, men, women and children run in fear at the sight of her. She also refuses to pose well for the camera - doesn't see the point, I think. She's a hunting dog, not one of those silly show dogs! Annie is very intimidating; we call her our black shuck, although she's incredibly smooth and not shaggy. Here's an example of a black shuck:

That should give you nightmares!

 

Annie must have a kind of charisma, however, to go with all of that terror-mongering: Everywhere we go, most dogs immediately adore her. (The exception, of course, being the very territorial or very fearful.) Whatever size, whatever breed, they promptly want to play, sniff, submit - anything! Neighborhood dogs try to clamber over fences just to join her on our wonderful walks: There's Sugar the Boxer, Jenny the Black Lab, and (our names for them) Walter and Leo the Somethings.

Just these last couple of days, we met Olaf and Oreo. Olaf is a friend's miniature poodle, barely out of puppyhood, who loves everybody and everything and was convinced that he found a new playmate in Annie - though she was a little too stressed to play. And then, this morning, Oreo (a Pit-bull mix) jumped his fence and refused to go back. He said hello. He wagged! He barked! He wagged and barked and wriggled some more! He wanted to go walking with us, because he loves us. He loves me, he loves Annie - he really loves Annie! Annie is awesome! I really think he would have come all the way with us, doing whatever awesome thing we were doing. It took all my strength and dexterity just to shove him back over his fence to his distressed relations (I mean owner). In the process, of course, I got covered in Oreo-hair and Oreo-kisses (which is something I never thought I'd say), but he didn't mind.

In all of this, Annie just thought that he was little weird. Because that's how she is. She'll say hello, but she ignores other dogs for the most part - not even playing with them much. She just wants to make sure that they don't play with us; we're her people, and she hates it when other dogs steal us. It's funny. She has this adoring fan club of Oreos and Sugars and Olafs, picking them up wherever she goes, a following for Team Annie - she could head up her own pack if she wanted! But she doesn't think that way.

She's a hunting dog, after all. All those other dogs are just silly.