(wow I went on and on and on... there is a 10,000 character limit on a single post )

This did however backfire on one of my old friends from University. We'd shared an appartment back in our student days on work placement in Birmingham. He had an ex and a daughter in Birmingham from those days though he lived in London at this point. He would come up most weekends to see them, and being as he didn't always get along so well with his ex I had given him a key to my house incase he needed a place to stay locally. I was at my parents one weekend, and had not seen him in a long time. He didn't know that Elsa lived there too now. It was a Saturday evening and his visit with his ex and daughter had not gone too well and he needed a place to stay so he headed over to my place and let himself in.

Elsa was not impressed with a stranger (to her) just walking into her home. So she did what a police trained guard dog would do. Decided to take him down and incapacitate him. Remember that she's not too good at that and is not disposed to violence. My friend is quite a way into the house when Elsa attacked. She, of course, missed his arm but did get him nicely on the leg and dragged him down. Of course at that point she let go, probably trying to decide if he needed washing or not, and he got away. I came home about three hours later and found him baracaded in the bathroom with an angry Elsa trying to tear the door down. He was okay, he had a towel tied round the nice bite on his thigh, and once I let Elsa know he was okay she calmed down pretty much immedately. They got on quite well after that, but my bathroom door was never the same again.

A lot of my friends at the time were from my time at university, and a lot of time at university was spent either drunk, in cloud of smoke, or both. There was some studying I am sure... but I don't really recall much of that to be honest! But anyway they would often come round as I had a decent place to hang out. Elsa of course is a semi-competant drug dog, so I never had any problem figuring out if one of them was holding out on us... Drug dogs are trained so that if they find drugs, or someone carrying them they will sit, all polite at that location or in front of that person (note: if you are ever in an airport and one of the police dogs sits in front of you, it doesn't want its ears rubbed, well it probably does, but it's pointing you out in a quiet manner to it's officer, prepare for fun with body cavity searches!).

Over the years I had her, Elsa had claimed my sofa as her own. It wasn't in the best shape to begin with, but a couple of years of German Shepard attention had made it pretty nasty. But it was hers and indoors it would be where you would find her, her favorite spot.

When I got a job offer I couldn't refuse in California it was a hard decision to make about what to do with Elsa, bring her with me, or find her a new home. In the end I decided that I really didn't want her going through an extended quarentine proceedure at a goverment run kennels, and also being as she was a long haired German Shepard, taking her from the English weather where she didn't much like the English summers even, to the edge of a desert in California would be too much and too cruel on her. Of course I had no problem finding her a good home. She ended up with a friend and his family who had a nice big house and garden across the road from a big park - perfect. Also he was so dedicated in taking her on, and making her at home that they got rid of their nice family sofa, and in its place put Elsa's nasty, beat up, ratty sofa. It looked quite... special... in their upscale family room lol.

Those are my favorite Elsa stories, she really was one of a kind I think.

I miss her a lot sometimes.