Ben Shimizu got his dog Annie, who is a pit bull and German Shepherd mix, 4 years ago "at a dog convention downtown. They had booths where dogs were competing in both agility and confirmation and behavioral training. She was for sale by this organization called Bullseye Pitbull Rescue. They had a number of dogs there and she was the product of a litter, she was six months old at the show. I already had two dogs and two cats at the time so I wasn't looking for another dog. She had this little bib on that said, 'Please adopt me' and the rest is history."

In the house now are a one year old cat named Shabu along with Annie. "They wrestle all the time. They love each other."

"I never saw the father but the papers say he was a German Shepherd. I met all of her siblings and she was the only one that was unlike them. They all looked like what you'd assume is a pit bull but she had much softer features. A lot of that tendency comes out when she's out in the woods in the mountains."

Shimizu has a very sweet relationship with Annie who has had several rounds of behavioral training. She's very obedient (and has done obedience and agility training too) and when Shimizu put some dog biscuits on her paws as she laid down, she waited patiently until he gave the ok before gobbling them up. She's even competed in the areas she's been trained in.

"She knows how to go up teeter totters and go through tunnels," said Shimizu, " Out last competition was out in Auburn and she did really well. Out there it's cold, you're running on dirt and there are so many more animals so you are easily distracted but she handled it great. She's a huge athlete. For a general exercise she runs beside me on my mountain bike when we go through the park and she will run for 45 minutes, twice a day." The two of them both enjoy Lincoln Park.

The two are very close and she knows it. Annie is not a tiny dog, she's about average for Pit Bull but "she's the largest lap dog I've ever had," said Shimizu, "She will kind of forcibly climb on to your lap, even unsuspectingly and sleep there."

We encountered Shimizu and Annie at C & P Coffee and he noted, "When my friends see us at the coffee shop they are kind of astonished by that habit. Outside of Pete and Cam's dog here she's kind of the house dog."

Annie has a mischievous streak. Two weeks ago Shimizu came home, "and I couldn't understand what these little white feathers were in the house. I kept walking around the house and I kept seeing them and I went in the bedroom and one of my down pillows was eviscerated. There were down feathers EVERYWHERE and I'm still finding them now. She looked up at me like, 'no big deal.' It took a while to clean them up."

Unless they are indestructible, toys and Annie don't really mix because she will destroy them.

Annie's diet is a grain free food from Next to Nature and that's mixed with a little wet food too. Her treats are mostly biscuits.

Her best friend is Seetah, a shepherd mix, and they are close in age and athletic ability. But Seetah is really high energy and it "kind of mellows Annie out."

One of the German Shepherd traits that shows up in Annie is her left ear. When she hears a sound it stands straight up. "I think it's to enhance her hearing which along with her sense of smell is impeccable. We used to play hide and seek in the park and I would bike away and hide and she would work in circles, taking very little time until she picked up my scent and found me."

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