She was so cute, I could have squeezed the you-know-what out of her.

(I haven't found any photos of me hugging Abby, but I did find the one above with Nikki.)

She was so cute that I wanted to squeeze the shit out of her. For the most part, it is a figure of speech, but in my case with Abby, it wasn’t far from the truth. I often called Abby my ‘Huggy Baby’ because I used to hug her all the time. Sometimes if I was excited or overly enthusiastic, I would squeeze, once in a while too hard. Abby normally liked the attention even if she was sometimes smothered with it. A couple of times she whined at the discomfort I inflicted upon her. One time in an overzealous state, even by my standards with Abby, I squeezed her so hard that she vomited. She wasn’t mad at me, but I was embarrassed that I hurt my baby girl. I always checked the vigorousness in which I hugged her from that incident on. I didn’t stop hugging her and kept doing it even on the day she died.
A few years later, when that series on National Geographic aired, The Dog Whisperer, I learned several ways to deal with an unruly dog with behavioral problems. It turns out that I had stumbled upon several of these training techniques admittedly by luck. For example the hugging. To me, hugging Abby was an outward manifestation of my love for her. However from her perspective, not only was the hug a way for us to bond, but it was a show of my dominance over her. Abby had natural tendency to lead and take charge, regardless if she was dealing with people or other dogs. By me asserting myself over her in what I thought was a simple hug; I was able to find a way to check her sometimes aggressiveness and keep her in line. I needed whatever luck I could find because I had no idea how to raise a puppy when we bought Abby.