[bubbad]

As a puppy Grace was the best. She never chewed anything,housetrained easily,like to spend days curled up with Snitt the cat and was just a very sweet girl.When she got to be about two I realized there were two things she absolutely hated,one was the guy who read the electric meter and the other was snakes. The poor meter guy had to come inside our gate to read the meter and if I wasn't aware of him in the neighborhood and Grace was in the yard she would not let him in the gate. She would go ape shit on him.I do believe she would have bitten him given the chance. Sometimes he would bring dog treats but nothing he did could win her over. He seemed nice enough but who knows. I never saw her go after anyone else before this guy or anyone after him for the rest of her life. When you live in Florida you get use to all the wild life,it is everywhere. We lived in a country club area but you could find everything from Egrets to rattlesnakes. Foutunately,we never had a run-in with a rattlesnake but there were lots of black snakes.When I would be gardening I would usually run across one ,it scared me for a moment but it would usually take off. Once I let Grace out, she ran to the gate and a three foot black snake flew through the grass,up a pole on the fence and literally flew into the air about 4 feet then dropped to the ground on the other side. She was within an inch of grabbing him. The one day a snake got into the pool area,I was doing something inside ,heard her barking,looked out the window,saw the snake she had cornered and ran out calling her so she would leave him alone. Grace took her eyes off the snake for a split second to look at me and the thing whipped around and bit her shoulder,as quick as that was Grace whipped around and bit the snake. I heard bone crunch ,she was not fooling around. She came to me and I got her in the house. I went over to the damaged snake,she had broken it's back, but it was still quite annoyed. I took a rake ,lifted the snake up and dropped him on the other side of the fence,he gimmped off into the long grass. I don't remember seeing as many after that. Photo of pool is where Grace had the snake cornered.