Fun in the Sun tiny Abby

       We rescued Abby from the pound when she was about a year old. She had been a family surrender and we figured they likely wanted this pitbull mix to be a guard dog. The problem was, Abby was scared of everything. She was scared of the dark, she was scared of small dogs (for awhile), she was not a good guard dog prospect. When she got older she did used to bark threateningly when people knocked on the door, but when she was young, she was just goofy and scared. 

     She grew up with Elecktra and Travis. She was mostly grown when we got her, but she filled out and matured over the years. 

      She loved the kids.

And they sure loved her.

     This was one of the last really great days Abby had. She "snuck out" of the house to come to a cookout. Doesn't she look pleased with herself?

     Abby crossed the rainbow bridge in October of 2016. I still miss her. She was goofy and destroyed a lot of things but she was a good dog. Lucky for me she let me make a model of her. I made this tiny Abby for Ethan as a gift a bunch of years ago. It is not quite Abby's build, seeing as a modified a resin pitbull and she was mixed with probably labrador, but I drew on all of Abby's markings from living Abby. So those are very accurate. I saw tiny Abby on the shelf the night before Fun in the Sun and asked Ethan if I could borrow her. And then my goal became seeing how many classes I could put tiny Abby in. 

     The first one was natural trail. I used the bridge diorama I made years ago and just stuck Abby in the scene. 

A kid out on her pony is very likely going to also bring her dog, right?

     Next I put her in my picnic at the horse show scene. The snacks table is a fairly new addition to the ever evolving scene and I thought Abby would potentially want to be near the snack table.

There is food on there after all.

And food is so tempting. 

     But real Abby would never actually steal food off the table (that is probably not true, I am pretty sure did did at some point). But she would totally beg near the table. 

      Real Abby would definitely have taken some handouts. Even though she never got fed from the table, tiny Abby did. 

I also put her in the Dog Days of Summer scene with a whole bunch of Breyer dogs I also have. 

Tiny Abby was my favorite. 

     She also got into the Sizzling Hot scene with the neighborhood cookout. She must have figured out the vacant Breyer doll was a good mark. 

As she was begging food from her again. 

     She also got into the Scene class with the beach party. And look, she was begging for food again.

     That is definitely something real Abby would have done. Though real Abby learned that she needed to stay back from the table (she would stand at the edge of the living room and eagle-eye the floor for dropped food). If any food was offered, she wanted it.

     I still want to have my own model Abby, but I have not gotten around to trying to make one. Since Abby was part labrador I was considering using the Breyer labrador and modifying that. But Abby was not really shaped that way either. Labradors are sort of the same thickness all over, Abby had a large, pitbull chest and a very slender back end. She was taller and slimmer than a full pitbull. She was definitely a unique dog. One day maybe I will have my own tiny Abby model. Until then it's nice that Ethan let me borrow his.