All About Molly Dog

Molly Dog is a 5 year old Beagle/Mini Pinscher mix that was adopted from Joliet Township Animal Control in August 2011. When I brought her home, she had a bad case of kennel cough and needed to be on antibiotics for the first week. She would cough a LOT and knowing nothing about dogs (Molly is my first dog), I hopped online to see what Google had to say about relieving some of her symptoms. One of the first things that popped up in the results was “In order to soothe the dog’s throat, try giving one teaspoon of honey every few hours.” Luckily, I had a big jar of honey from one of my dad’s beehives, so I grabbed a spoon and called Molly into the kitchen. She LOVED the honey. She licked that spoon clean every time I filled it. It helped ease the coughing and a few days later she was over the kennel cough.

I first noticed Molly’s affinity for winged creatures not long after I adopted her. I enrolled her in a puppy training class at PetSmart, and every time we had to go to class she wanted to go see the birds. She would stand on her hind legs with front paws on the bird cages and just watch them. I bought a couple of bird feeders to hang around the yard, which was when Molly first discovered squirrels. She hates squirrels. Later on through the spring and summer, I would see her occasionally watching a fly or a ladybug buzzing around, which were totally harmless to her. Then I saw her watching a bee. I got a little nervous when I saw her try to snap it out of the air. I started teaching her to look but don’t touch.

I received my first package of bees in May 2015. I brought them home and installed them into the hive and put a short wire fence around it so that no critters would be able to get in. Molly noticed the new addition to the yard right away and ran towards it to check it out. I taught her to sit at the side of the hive and not get too close to the bees as they flew in and out. She would sit for long periods of time just watching the bees. Every time I let her out into the yard and said, “Let’s go see your bees,” she would run right to the hive and sit down next to it to observe. And so they became Molly’s Bees.

When she’s not busy watching her honeybees flying, Molly can be found in the warmer weather on the front porch keeping an eye on the neighborhood and the local squirrel population. She is popular with the retirees that live in the area and is also a VITAS hospice Paw Pal, meaning she is assigned hospice patients to visit on a regular basis to help brighten their day. Her favorite place to go is the local dog park, and mainly the big dog section (she’s only 23 pounds) because she likes to bark in the big dog’s faces. In the colder weather, she will more than likely be in her bed in front of the fireplace or under a blanket snoring loudly.