Catching Up

Roxy and the Infamous Julie

I just looked at the date of my last post. Wow, it's been a while! My apologies to both my loyal readers. Roxy and I have been busy. Last Saturday was Dogtoberfest. Honestly, I was worried. We hadn't practiced walking on a leash like I had wanted and I forgot to bring the Halti, Roxy's no-pull head harness. Fortunately, everything was fine. I think Roxy was overwhelmed by all the dogs and people. (She was also worn out, as I had Son #2 run her around for 20 minutes before we left.) We met up with the Infamous Julie, who was pulling a cart no less. That girl can do anything! The weather was perfect. There was a dock diving demonstration, lots of vendors giving away free samples, and hundreds of dogs -- most in costume too -- though none were as pretty as my Roxy Bee. Probably the most amazing part of the day was how calm it was. There were literally hundreds of dogs all sniffing and barking at each other and not one fight broke out. Even Roxy, who is usually anxious around other dogs, didn't seem to care.

Not much to report on the puppy front. I got the first weekly newsletter from Breeder last week. The puppies are all doing fine, mostly eating and growing at this point. She sent individual pictures of each puppy. You can see where the tan markings are coming in. They are so cute! I'm sure newsletter #2 will come this weekend. The puppies are 16 days old today. According to my research, their ears and eyes should be opening about now, which should make the newsletters a lot more interesting. Now their personalities will start coming out. I can't wait to meet them.

In the meantime, Hubby and I have been looking for crates. The search has proven to be more difficult than I had expected. Ultimately I'll buy a folding wire crate for travelling and showing. Since I don't know how big he'll get, I don't know if I want a 42" or a 48". However, I don't want to get a big one just yet, because that'll make housebreaking more difficult (so I've read. It's been a long time since I've done this.) For now I've got a used small wire crate that we'll keep in the living room. Puppy will be confined but still be able to look around. I figure we'll have to replace it with a larger crate pretty soon, but hopefully it'll work for the time being. New crates are pretty pricey, especially for a puppy that will outgrow it quickly. I've been trying to see what I can borrow or get used. There are several shops in town for gently used baby stuff, but none for puppies. Wonder if I could make a career out of that?!

I also have a slightly larger plastic carrier for the bedroom.Yes, Puppy's sleeping in the room with me. We'll see how this works out. I haven't used a crate in the house for over a decade.We had one for Pepper when she was a pup, though we stopped crating her at 2 years old. She had outgrown the carrier and there wasn't really a place to put it in the new house. I sold it a yard sale. I'm regretting that now. (I also sold a couple really nice baby gates. What was I thinking?!) Roxy and Logan came to us as housebroken adults, so we never even considered getting crates.

Work has been busy too. I'm not going to bore you with the details. Let's just say it's been taking up a lot of my time. I've picked up a few hours of overtime each week, which will help fund puppy supplies. And on that note, I need to cut this short. My new partner is out of town for training this week, so I need to go in on my days off to check messages, clean the kennel and walk dogs. It's inconvenient, but:

more overtime = more puppy stuff

Until next time, -- K