Introducing Twinklebee!

Introducing Twinklebee!  Twinklebee has just turned four and is a maltese cross chihuahua.  She is my first dog and truly such an enormous blessing and lifeline.  She has earned herself the title of my 'rescue dog'. People will often say 'look after mummy', and she does, beautifully.  Some say she is spoilt but I say no, no way compared to what she does for me.  She is so affectionate, perceptive and intuitive and always responds to what she perceives in a compassionate and beautiful way.
Twinklebee is very clever and enjoys playing lots of games.  She knows many words - we learn through play.  The best advice someone gave me when she was a puppy was to say the name of the action when she was doing it - like going inside, upstairs, doing wee etc, which means when she hears these words she knows what they mean! The other best piece of advice was 'now, we don't want a delinquent dog so you need to train her' so from that time on that's what we've done together, everyday, usually through play with the help of little bits of treat. She looks forward to play time - she'll have a sleep early in the evening, then when she wakes, she asks to play.  She's a great communicator, telling me what she needs and wants, she doesn't always get what she wants depending on what it is because there are boundaries, especially with safety, and sometimes what she wants doesn't go with what we're trying to achieve but I do encourage her and applaud her for speaking up. I am the leader and she is very obedient for the most part, but we're more a team - I am not at all authoritarian with her and we learn things through gentle and reward based ways.  At other times it is her who looks after me which sounds selfish and silly but she is truly like a trained therapy dog - she instincively does many many things. 
Twinklebee's favourite game is still tug of war, but she knows many others.  We play fetch, hide and seek with toys, agility type games, treasure finding games, have races (where I have no hope until she tires!) - she waits for the 'ready...set....go!' and we race to a toy, we have 3 containers exactly the same and I put a toy under one and mix them all around and she sniffs at them and then will dig at the ground at the one where the toy is, and we do 'tricks' like speak, shake, high five, wave, shake with the other hand and things like that... I say "who's a good girl?" and she says 'woof'  I say "what does a dog say?" and she responds, I ask her where her paw is and she holds it up to me to show me...just fun things.  She knows me as mummy and knows the name of many people we see every day.  I can ask her to find them or to take things to them and she does.  The things we've been learning lately are "where are you?" - she'll come to me if not beside me or in the same room as me, otherwise she'll say one 'woof' to say "here I am!".  I am trying to teach her that because I panic when I can't find her!  She has also recently reliably learnt the name of two of her toys - mouse and ball.  She can show you the one you've asked her to, and she also picks up and puts in your hand the one you've asked her to.  When we're playing games we mix 'commands' in too, like stay,wait, stop, come, shhh, no, 'with me' (our word for 'heel') and many others.  We go walking everyday too and try to walk many different routes and find new ones, so that her mind is always stimulated. Outside of the house or garden I think her favourite place is the park, and after that her favourite place is shopping!  There are of course shops she can't go to, but many do let her come in - she goes places like to the bank,chemist, post office, pet shop, bookshop, toy shop and dog friendly cafe.  Then she tries to go to all the shops! 
She has taught me so many things, including how cool it is to belong to a 'pack'.  I love it when she snuggles around my head or lays her head on mine when she's on the pillows- it's very comforting.  She's such a beautiful much loved creature.  I love dogs!