A stranger’s first comment about Silas will be about one of three things: 1) the ears 2) the spots or 3) his general pinkness. It’s usually the ears. As a person who doesn’t have a whole lot of dog experience, I find the ears to be pretty handy as a barometer.
Regular ears:
Uncertain ears:
Sleepy ears:
Alarmed ears (he barked at something half a second after this):
He also folds them back like greyhound ears, either when he’s doing his “I am sweet and tiny” thing with strangers (I hesitate to use that other “s” word.) or in other very stressful situations. I’m usually too busy to take pictures then, but you can see a little of it here, when we made puppy Silas miserable taking him to the beach:
Some of my favorite pictures are from the “half mast” stage. Silas started out with folded ears, you see. Around the four month mark, they started to stand up. Progress was irregular. They’d be up and down, and for a while one of them was definitely more up than the other.
My Imperfect Dog 
Ohh gosh. I feel like such a cliche. His ears were one of my first comments here too… oy.
His face reminds me so much of Elli’s face. Still looks like such a puppy, just like her.
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Oh, I don’t mind. Better the ears than “Hey, why is your dog acting like that?” which is what I’m always afraid of.
The dog trainer we talked to last week said, “How old is he? 11 or 12 months?” I had to say, “umm, 16 months.” He does a very convincing puppy act.
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Ears are so expressive. I loved the pictures with your interpretation.
I love Honey. But prick ears are definitely easier to read than floppy ears.
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I love his ears! And there is no way you can miss them! We used to call a GSD with ears like that the Very Large Array. I think Silas has “Very Large Array” ears too!
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Indeed. I’m kind of glad that he didn’t have the big ears from day one. I would have felt to name him something representative of them. (Instead, I named him after the villain of a Dickens novel. Like that was a propitious beginning.)
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Sorry for being cliched, too. Heh. Dogs with large, expressive ears just melt me in a way that most drop-eared dogs just don’t.
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I have been known to see a dog and say, “Oh, if only his ears stood up…”
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We have a dog just like yours. Do you know what he is mixed with?
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No idea!
It must not be anything too weird–I’ve run into a few very similar looking dogs, but none of their owners know the mix, either. I’d almost guess Jack Russell/whippet, except I’ve never seen a whippet in the area he’s from.
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Great. Thanks for the info.
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