Huge Shaggy Dog: Black Russian terrier

something like this (never seen a dog like this before), leaning up against me all smiles...

Delia

P.S. I don't quite know how to react to dogs (didn't grow up with them as pets -- they were outside, to keep the bad people away); it was particularly hard to figure out what to do at one point in the past when a professor's dog -- a mature golden retriever -- was treating *me* as the owner... would always come to loudly great me at the office door, wrap himself around my feet when I would seat in the chair and was very difficult to dissuade from leaving with me when I would leave... D.