Luna

Female

2 years old

After losing our Border Collie Stella to cancer in 2018, we were finally feeling ready to get a new puppy. Then 2020 happened and with the entire household being home full time, we felt like it would be a great experience and memory for the kids to get a new puppy and help take care of it. She was available right before Christmas so it was the best gift our kids ever received.

We were amazed by the striking blue color of Luna's eyes so we wanted a name associated with something like the sky, stars, the color blue, night, etc. So we came up with Luna. In Roman mythology, Luna is the goddess of the moon. After we decided on her name, we remembered that the name of our dog who passed away meant star. Luna is the moon and Stella was the star. We knew it was meant to be.

Luna is a very affectionate dog—the most affectionate of any dog we've ever owned. She will hop up and drape herself across your lap to cuddle with you. Putting her paws on your arm or shoulder as if she is giving you a hug. She will follow you everywhere around the house. She is a herding breed so she always has to have a job. Luna is very athletic and loves to run at full speed across the backyard, chasing tennis balls or catching frisbees. She never goes too far without one (or two) tennis balls in her mouth when she is outside. She will herd all the tennis balls in a pile, count them with her nose and then sit and wait for you to throw one. Luna is really smart. She knows most of her stuffed toys by name. If you ask her to go get a specific one, she will come back with it so we can play catch with it. Aside from running, Luna loves to look out the window at the backyard and watch for raccoons. She will alert us if one is in the tree trying to get our birdfeeder and we remember to bring it in for the night and she's very proud of herself. As far as quirks, Luna has a few. The funniest one is every morning when she hears me blow dry my hair, she nudges the bathroom door open and comes in to join me. She will sit in front of me until I run the blow dryer over her fur and give her a little pretend blow dry. She also loves to wake up our daughter in the morning. She's usually the last to get up so we tell Luna to go wake her up and she runs down the hall and jumps on her bed to nuzzle her awake.

We love all her qualities but our favorite is how affectionate she is with our family. She protects us, loves us, 'talks' to us, listens to us (mostly) and she makes us laugh every single day.

We brought Luna home and that night was a major snowstorm hit us that shut everything down Christmas Eve of 2020. She was so tiny we had to shovel a path for her to get across the driveway and to the yard. There was so much snow on the ground that she didn't see our grass until early February.

Luna likes to have scrambled eggs with her breakfast every morning. She will lay down at my husband's feet and patiently wait while he makes his scrambled eggs. She knows she gets one little spoonful in her breakfast so she won't eat her breakfast until eggs are ready.

What has Luna brought to your household?

Luna taught us a lot about having patience and perseverance to get through tough times. She got us through the pandemic, the 'COVID puppy' phase, which was NOT fun, and the winter of 2020/2021 when we didn't see a lot of anyone besides our immediate household. Most recently, she brought us comfort and consolation with her warm hugs when we needed it most this past January as we were mourning the loss of a dear family member.