Meet Lani, a friendly, adorable, stunning and very regal-looking Labrador-Ridgeback girl who lives on O’ahu with her family. As you can see, the Ridgeback genes are strongest in Lani, and they show up not just in looks, but also in her love for sniffing and exploring. Which makes me think that my Cody must be a wanna-be Ridgeback, given that, if I let him, he would put his nose down and find himself all the way in Calistoga by the time he picked it up again.
I photographed Lani on a glorious afternoon at Kailua Beach for the Paws in Paradise Calendar and Lani made the cut! This means she is a calendar girl, and also a cover girl for the Fall 2013 issue of Island Dog Magazine. Check her out!
Lani definitely loves going to the beach, and when the coast is clear, her Mommy, Marcia, lets her roam, frolic and play to her heart’s content. But her lion-hunting Ridgeback genes really emerge when she scouts the vegetation around her home, her other favorite activity.
When it is time for a walk, her Mommy says “Get your leash!” and Lani goes, pulls it down from the hook on the door and leaves it in the middle of the yard. Despite learning a few (self-taught) little tricks, though, I am told that Lani royally flunked agility training. It seems she prefers sniffing to jumping.
Lani is very much Mommy’s girl, and she is known to sometimes steal one of Marcia’s shoes from the pile outside the door. She does not chew the shoe, only takes it for comfort and company when she has to be alone. And she only takes Mommy’s shoes, nobody else’s.
Marcia makes Lani her very own special treats, which she calls Lani Pops. These are a combination of Lani’s favorite foods mixed in water, then frozen into ice cube trays. Lani looooves them, especially on those (many) hot Hawai’i days.
Lani does have a nickname, and that is Lani Bon, or you can say her name in a low, drawn-out voice: Laaaaniiiii. By the way, Lani in Hawaiian means heaven, heavenly, or the sky. And isn’t Lani just heavenly?
More Tales of Tails you might enjoy:
And these are my Boyz:
“May You be Happy,
May You be Blessed,
May You Prosper in all Things.”
