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Stranger outside of Whole Foods, to Pnin and Willow: She's such a nice dog. Calm, sweet, obedient. I was thinking of getting a golden retriever, but they're too big. I want a dog like her, though -- like a golden retriever, but smaller.
Pnin: Actually, she is a golden retriever.
Stranger: Oh.
Pnin: She's a puppy, so she's still growing. And she's maybe a little small for her age. There are some females who are 60 pounds at six months. Willow was only in the high 30s or low 40s. So maybe she'll be only 55 or 60 pounds when she's full grown.
It's all too common for people to get my beloved's breed wrong. It's not too weird that people sometimes mistake her for a Labrador. Little goldens don't have the big fluffy coat that bigger ones do, and they do look more like Labs. But when Willow was a lot littler, someone asked me if she was a cocker spaniel. Lest I worry about her being small for her age too much, though, I've also been asked if she was part Great Dane. Uh, no. As a small human myself, though, I guess the two of us will just have to stick together.
Pnin: Actually, she is a golden retriever.
Stranger: Oh.
Pnin: She's a puppy, so she's still growing. And she's maybe a little small for her age. There are some females who are 60 pounds at six months. Willow was only in the high 30s or low 40s. So maybe she'll be only 55 or 60 pounds when she's full grown.
Dog size, an issue I can totally relate to, and clutter your comments with! People kept thinking our Bisou was a standard poodle puppy, to the point that we started to get concerned. Had we been misled? Was she going to grow tall enough to reach the counter? She may be a bit tall for a miniature, but the issue was mostly that poodles come in three sizes, and "miniature" is actually "medium" in poodle terms, and because Bisou's definitively not a "toy" - i.e. handbag-dog-sized - people guess the other variety.
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