Camouflage Dog!

Camouflage Dog is Cherise Kelley's new occaisional serial about her dog Pumpkin's adventures at the dog park.

Pumpkin befriends a young human whose mother is thinking of getting a dog. Pumpkin and her new human friend hope the dog his mother gets will be a Kaxian, but there is the very real possibility it will be a Nique.

All episodes of the serial will be bundled in both ebook and paperback once they total 200 pages.

Episode 1:
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Pumpkin is our current dog. Her full name is Pumpkin Pie Spice, because her coloring reminds Scott of the spice you use to make pumpkin pie. My mom calls Pumpkin 'Spice Girl.' :)

We rescued Pumpkin from a kill shelter in September of 2014. This is how skinny she was then.

The people at the shelter thought she was a boy and were calling her Silas!

Even today, most people who meet Pumpkin think she's a boy. The camouflage collar, halter, and leash Scott insisted on getting for her don't help.

We had a great deal of fun inviting our dog park friends to speculate on Pumpkin's mix of breeding before we had her tested.

Some were sure she was a Catahoula Cur. Others adamantly called her a Dutch Shepherd. The most common label put on Pumpkin even today is Pitt Bull, because of her brindle coloring.

The true answer surprised me. It turns out there are at least 18 breeds of dog who commonly are born with brindle coloring. We were sure our dog was not a Pitt Bull, and so we bought a Wisdom Panel dog breed DNA test from Amazon, swabbed our dog's cheek twice, and mailed the swabs in. Two weeks later, we got the answer.

Wisdom Health is 100% certain Pumpkin is half brindle Boxer and half German Shepherd. I had never met a Boxer before, and so I studied up on the breed. Oh, yes. She's half Boxer, all right. She's nuts! She has calmed down a little now that she's five years old, but when we first got her I couldn't walk her three feet without her grabbing a stick and tossing it in the air and catching it, then shaking it as if to kill the stick!

I am so glad she got the German Shepherd mouth instead of the Boxer mouth! I will say, she sure does camouflage well!