just the basics.

11 years old
yorkshire terrier
female
7 pounds

appearance.

blue-black coat (slightly greying now, very slightly)
the hair on her head is golden-brown
distinctive black stripe from her forehead down her nose
a shiny black nose!

bio.

Mocha has been a valued member of our family for around 10 years now - time really flies, I've known her for more than half my life! Over the years, she's been a loving and faithful companion, not to mention such a clever and amusing girl - we really couldn't ask for more in a dog.

much more to come - it's almost 2am and I'm brain-dead, but I really wanted to get this started.

the little things.

she loves getting her belly scratched. LOVES IT. She will chase you around giving you her paw until you scratch her tummy. She never asks for anything else; not food, not treats. Just belly rubs.

she understands the phrase "you stay home" and protests loudly if anyone says it. It's usually a joke because we rarely leave her at home, so if we teasingly say, "Mocha! You stay home!" she will bark and follow my mother very closely (because she never jokes about leaving her at home). If my mother does say it, she will know it's true and sit on the couch sadly.

Sometimes when I come home from school, or if my dad comes home from work, she will howl the most adorable greeting ever.

When she hears the garage door open, she will stand at the top of the stairs and wait for my dad to come in.

If I'm working at a table/desk, she will sit under my chair. And if I accidentally step on her, hell breaks loose.

Having said that, though, she never seriously bites people. It's more of a warning nip. Though when I was younger she would bite my hair and not let go if I did something that displeased her, which hurt. She stopped doing that years ago, though (I think she finally loves me! Jokes, she always loved me).

She never sleeps alone. She mostly sleeps in my mom's bed, but my mom wakes up earliest, and when she does, she will go into the room of whoever else is still sleeping, and so on, and so on, until everyone is awake.

I don't know how she knows, but when it's breakfast time or dinner time, she will stand in the kitchen until someone feeds her.

Mocha prefers humans to dogs; she has very few dog friends she approves of. Since we moved to our latest home, which is a townhouse unit, she met a lot of dogs that live nearby and now has two best friends: Lucas, a 5 year old Maltese and Bugs, a Scottish Terrier. Recently, we've been taking her to the local park to socialize with more dogs and she isn't too fond of it yet, but hopefully she'll like playing with them too in the future!

She cuddles stuffed animals instead of chewing them.

She had a lot of squeaky toys and balls that she loved when she was younger, but as she grew older, she stopped playing with them. I asked around, and some people think it might be because her teeth hurts when she picks them up because she's older now, because she still chases them when I throw them, but she doesn't chew them anymore, so we must get that checked out.

When she was younger, she picked up a tennis ball while we walked through a tennis court, and she carried it all the way home. She was very excited and proud of that - it was a long journey, and she frequently had to pause and put it down for a few seconds, but she managed to take it home.

That armchair in the living room is HER CHAIR.

She feels shame and knows when she is being laughed at. If she goes up the stairs and she stumbles a bit, she will quickly look around to see if anyone saw her slip. I remember this time, she wanted to jump onto the top part of the sofa, but she slipped and slid back down onto the cushion; she turned around and saw that I was staring at her, so she just pretended she was exactly where she wanted to be and lay her head down.

December 2, 2012: My mom was making something in the kitchen, and in the living room, she and I were having fun, rolling around on the carpet and chasing each other. After a few minutes, my mom walked right past us and went back so sit on the sofa in the living room, but she was still busy rolling around and didn't seem to notice. When she got tired, she started to look for my mom, and she headed for the kitchen. I watched her for several minutes, as she investigated the kitchen and even the washroom nearby, clearly puzzled by the fact that my mom wasn't where she last saw her. Still confused, she eventually made her way back to the living room, and I swear, her expression when she saw my mom sitting there was priceless. Her ears and tail just fell when I burst out laughing, and she sat next to my mom, looking so embarrassed.

gallery.

^{Drag image to address bar for full view!}