From: Isabel Lebrao <bellebrao@gmail.com>
To: j1hartwell@aol.com
Sent: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 2:56 am
Subject: News from Troy
Hi John and Linda,
Hope you all are well.
Looking back at some puppy pictures it is hard to believed that Troy is 9 months old already! Although he has more than 75lb he did not lose his puppy face completely and he sure is still acting like a puppy too.
He is so playful and EXTREMELY smart, intelligent, fast learner, and sweet with every one and other dogs too. He is very strong! I call him "my little lion". He still have a big passion for food, everything is eatable for him (we need to keep our eyes open, it is true, we had some accidents... with some library books, grandma's medicine and a couple of home works and lots of paper napkins and of course all stuffed animals he can put his mouth on but we all learned to prevent these things from happening again.
Troy LOVES to RUN so we "walk" him using a bike too (some times he walk us). He is having plenty of exercise and so as we! Between bike-running, walking around the block and fetching the tennis ball at the park (his favorite game) Troy is making about 10 miles a day!!!! It seems like he never gets tired. We also took him to the beach a couple times and he enjoys swim very much. He loves water and already jumped in the neighbor's pool and the park's water fountain . He needs to check every lake we passed by. Fetch is no problem at all. We taught him how to retrieve the tennis ball and now he is obsessed with any tennis ball he sees. Troy also exchanges his entire bowl of food for the tennis ball!
He is very willing to please us and has learned lots of tricks. With a little treat it is very easy to teach him almost everything, he even learned not to get our shoes and sandals (we still working on the socks!). After watching "Marley and Me" I can certainly say that Troy is an Angel!!!
Troy is becoming a VERY beautiful, mature chocolate lab, we are receiving complements from everybody everywhere we go! He is the baby of the family, never cries, complains and almost never barks, he gets crazy chasing birds and ducks (in his mind he is sure one day he will get one) he make us laugh. A great companion that makes irresistible not to rub his bally or use him as a pillow.
Sorry for the long e-mail, but is hard to stop when we start talking about Troy. He really completed our family!
Take Care and send a big hug to Chuck and Java from all of us.
The Lebrao family.
