Lily looking spiffy shortly after being groomed.
The black dot in the middle of her nose is a scar from Rattlesnake Bite Number Two.

It just fit her, so we went with it.  Now that I think about it, it fits her because she is mostly white, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time I came up with the name.

She just goes by her name.

Probably around September 1, 2002.

We figured she was Akita with possibly some German Shepherd. Her DNA test results show that German Shepherd is her predominant breed and she also has Akita and Afghan Hound ancestry. The Afghan Hound was a surprise and it sure didn't contribute anything to her appearance.

Lily is what most people would consider a fairly large dog.  Since we had Finian though, we don't think of her as being very large.  At about 90 pounds (40 kg) however, she is our largest dog.

She's a very attractive dog and people who meet her often compliment her on her appearance.  

For some time after we acquired Lily, we thought she was barkless.  As it turned out, her bark sounds almost exactly like MacKenzie's, so when she was barking, we thought it was him.  She has a pretty average big-dog bark.  Her howl is quite nice, though not as classic as Spook's was.  In addition to the usual dog vocalizations, she makes an odd growling/groaning sort of noise when she first greets us in the morning or after we get home from work.  She often stretches as she makes this noise.

When Chris was on his way to work on September 1, 2003, he saw Lily by the side of the road a few miles from our house.  She was miles from any residence and was obviously lost, so he picked her up and brought her home.  We suspect someone had driven her out there and dumped her.  We did the usual lost dog posters and ad, but there was no response.

She didn't act like she'd been abused and even knew a few basic commands.  She was underweight, though, and was not spayed, so someone wasn't taking very good care of her.

That was a stellar weekend for us:  the day before, I'd found Molly Maguire.

Lily is very sociable and loves to meet people.  Like Finian did, she enjoys grabbing people's arms or hands in her mouth.  She is totally untrustworthy with the cats, however, and can be quite aggressive with other dogs.  Luckily, she had sense enough not to mess with Finian and he actually liked her.

Before we acquired Lily, we'd only had male dogs.  For some silly reason, both of us thought a female dog would be more sensible and obedient than the males.  Lily quickly proved that theory wrong.  At first, she got into more trouble than any of the guys and was a bad influence on them, to boot.  She had a nasty habit of digging under our fence - or encouraging Creedence to dig out - and gallivanting around the neighborhood, taking several other dogs with her.  We ended that problem by installing an electric fence.

Her behavior has improved somewhat as she's gotten older, however, and despite everything, she's very obedient when people are around and would never think of being aggressive toward us.

She's been bitten by rattlesnakes twice but it didn't faze her much either time, luckily. Oddly, her coat took seven months to start growing back after we shaved her in September of 2009. Her vet suspected she had Cushing's disease, but fortunately she does not and it appears to be the result of an annoying but harmless condition called Alopecia X.

Going for walks and playing with MacKenzie, Creedence, and Dmitri.  She also enjoys getting sprayed by skunks - or at least, I assume she enjoys it, as it's happened over a dozen times now and she doesn't seem to mind at all. 

Lily's best friend is MacKenzie, but she also hangs out with Creedence a good deal.  (Being Lily's friend is a mixed blessing, as she's very much on the bossy side.)  She used to pick on Brittany, but for some reason, after Geneva's untimely death, the two of them starting getting along much better. She surprised us by immediately liking and accepting Fiona.