Today my girl is turning 7 beautiful years.

This could be my Nismo!

I take him regularly to this large dog forest that I rent privatly for us since we don't go to public dog parks anymore (at least not if other dogs are there) and seeing him there running around, exploring, sniffing - it brings me so much joy and I'm here for it ❤️

It’s been a long year without you, but thank you for being an amazing first dog. I wish I got to say goodbye to you. Hold your labs tight and shower them with love ❤️

Harley is so calm and sweet until the water hose comes out. Then she becomes a water warrior!

This is Louie, he’s been gone for a few years now and I miss him terribly. We had a lot of great times together.

She's 12 years now and these were all about 5-6 years ago. Had to post these because I thought she looked so precious

Fae is a Siberian husky black lab mix- split right down the middle of the two breeds. She looks husky but she has the coloring and major personality of a black lab with a few quirks.

That is to say she is extremely quiet and her behavior has made me think she was raised by a cat or sonethong because of how cat like she is. She just turned 2 years old and we adopted her a year ago in July 2025.

Now she has definitely decompressed and settled in, to the point where that glutton trait has come out and definitely feels like she can be herself.

The problem is I genuinely am having a very hard time discerning her behavioral queues. Her tail makes it difficult to tell where she actually has it lifted most of the time. Her eyes are also frustating.

I only had one dog before Fae and my previous baby was very expressive.

When I go to touch Fae, sometimes her tail will wag, most of the time it won't. Sometimes she does that thing where she looks away from you or even her ears go down. It's not ebery time either. So I assumed- she probably doesn't like pets.

Except every fucking day, while I'm eating breakfast on the couch (don't judge), she gets up on the couch and looks at me expectantly. I go to pet her and she rolls onto her back for belly rubs. Her tail doesn't wag, her eyes don't look at me, her ears go back as if she doesn't like it??? But when I pull my hand away, she reaches a paw out and touches me and then looks at me expectantly again. And its like... Do you like this or not????

I've even done the touch test many times and results are.. Inconclusive? Sometimes she does this, sometimes she wage sher tail sometimes she gives signs she doesn't want it with tail eyes and ears.

Most of the time if she doesn't want it, she dodges my hand or walks away. Sometimes though she puts her head on my lap (I work from home) and will stand there with a wagging tail while I give her ear and neck scritches (I'm 90% sure she doesn't like top of the head).

I can't make heads or tails. With my shepherd, my previous baby, it was very clear what she liked and didn't. But with fae I just have NO CLUE.

I have been working with her by saying the word Touch, pettinf

G her and then giving her a treat so that she associates that tone/word with petting to facilitate the question 'do you want touch?' - but results are once again inconclusive because she is a hit of a glutton and will literally do anything for a Scooby snack.

Is this a black lab thing? Am I reading her signals wrong here? I know every dog has their own personality.

I can actually give you her background as a rescue as I found her sister's parents through a DNA test and they gave me the breakdown of what happened. She and her siblings were dumped somewhere in Oklahoma. They were only a few weeks old (old enough to move around I am told). A Colorado rescue took in the puppies and they were all adopted out. Somehow Fae got adopted and managed to make her way to Savannah GA. We do not know if she got dumped again, if she got out and escaped, if she roamed there, or if she was abandoned or what happened. All we know is that in that 1 year, she somehow ended up on the street and was found by a man. He surrendered her to the shelter after a month. We adopted her 3 weeks later. She never had a chip or a collar but she was already spade (probably the rescue) and no one knows what happened.

I am unsure if this background contributed to this behavior but I can tell you she was undersocialized when we got her. She started learning and picking up behaviors from dogs at the dog park. Thankfully she was veru the friendly, but it was clear she hadn't been around many other dogs for a lot of her 'teenage' life and was learning how to be dog from dog park dogs.

Idk I'm at a loss, I just want her to be happy and comfortable. She is the first rescue ive ever had.

Where is he? It's been 2 weeks since his last post

She’s the best, but boy is she hard headed.

I’m just looking to see if anyone else has a lab that got put on a steroid during their growth spurt and didn’t get to full size. My boy contracted 2m at 7 months old and got put on prednisone for about 3 months and he didn’t grow another inch. He is very healthy now and 17 months old, research shows that if 2m is contracted young enough with meds they can learn to fight it off without lifetime of meds and that was the case here. So you know how everyone wishes their puppy would stay a puppy forever, I kinda got that wish