Leaps and Bounds

It seems like every day that we wake up Luna has gotten just a little bit bigger during the night or picked up yet another little milestone. She weighed 30 pounds this morning which means she is officially twice as big as she was when we brought her home. She seems even to be growing into her ears a little bit which makes me more than a little sad.

We're trying to take her on fun car rides as often as possible in hopes that she won't have the aversion to it that Abbie does. Here recently we took her to Uncle Wayne's at Amigo's Dive Center.

She finally got big enough in the last week to climb up onto the bed by herself. My only worry is that she also jumps down, and I don't want her to cause dysplasia in her elbows.

And, finally, a picture from today. Oh, my goodness, I just LOVE those ears!

Roll Over, Roll Over

These last few days I have thought a lot about and been in awe over how much we can love them, and how quickly. We have many nicknames for Luna: Goober Dog, 'Tard, REtard, Devil Dog, Luna-tic, OH MY GOSH!, Luna-Balloona, Bella Luna, Little Bit, Little Sister, and I'm sure there are more that I'm missing. They are uttered in amazement and frustration, and occasionally anger, but always there's at least a little bit of love behind them. More often than not, there is a lot of love behind them, even when we're frustrated. Always, though, there is love. Though we loved her from the start, she has become a piece of our hearts. ..How could she not? Have ya seen those ears?!

She looks such the regal guard dog in the picture above. She's definitely becoming more sassy. Today a couple of folks came to the door and knocked, and she was not fond of that at all. The bark she offered was not a welcoming one.
For whatever reason, Luna loves our shower. She has to check it out every time we go to the bathroom and the door is open.
While we want her to be a good citizen, and much of her homeschooling is for that, we have to throw in the occasional just-for-fun work. "Roll over" has been our project the last couple of days. Dad helped her master the final touches today. When I got up this afternoon, I decided I wanted to get it on video. Luna was so excited, though, that I couldn't quite get her to do it. That I had the camera in one hand and the treats in the other didn't help any. She's accustomed to some accompanying hand gestures, so I confused her. The result was amusing, so I posted it and the more perfect results when Dad came to help out. (Note how Big Sister is sitting and downing trying to get treats, too in the first one.LOL)

Puppy School

We went to J & K Canines today for our first class of puppy school. We would really like for Luna to be a well-behaved, well rounded companion, so we are trying to train her well from the beginning. They talked with us about properly establishing ourselves as the pack-leaders, the top of the pecking order and about how to reinforce the good stuff and discourage the bad. Part of discouraging the bad was using a noise maker like a "shake can" so we stopped at the store on the way home to get a few of the big cans that make the best ones. Here the girls wait patiently.

Another suggestion we got was to use something other than Big Sister to work off some of Luna's herding instinct and energy, and a soccer ball was one of the suggestions, so we went right away to get just that.

Spay or Neuter, Please

Somewhere around 20, 000 dogs and cats enter animal shelters each and every day. About 10,000 dogs and cats are euthanized in shelters each and every day. As much as I might want to stop that, to bring all those animals home and show them loving care, I cannot. You cannot. No one person can. If each person does his or her part, however, by spaying and neutering their pets and encouraging others to do the same, we can help prevent animals from filling all those shelters.
Luna's spay was completed last Thursday, March 5th, and she has recovered well. They actually also did an umbilical hernia repair while they had her anaesthetized. The jury is still out on whether that repair was successful. Her surgical incision has a pucker in it right over the hernia site, and since I don't want to apply pressure to her belly (that would just be mean), I can't tell if the pucker is just in the closure or if it's actually the hernia's continued presence. Frankly, I'm gonna be a little miffed if it's still there. I really don't want to have to put her under again.

By the way, I do recognize that another way to prevent the overfilling of shelters and help those animals is to adopt from a shelter or to take in a rescue from another source. Big Sister, and her big sister, Chelsea, both came to us that way, and both have loved us immeasurably. We debated long and hard about getting a purebred this time around, and about getting a puppy versus a grown rescue. This time, we came to the conclusion that this was the route we needed to go. Again, we were granted a precious gift, and Luna's circumstances brought all of us together. In the future, though, we wouldn't hesitate to adopt another rescue. Please consider this if you're pondering a pet.

Luna loves to lie next to her big sister, and she's actually learning to do so without completely driving Abbie nuts. Today was a good day, with much less harassment than usual.

We have an appointment with a dog trainer Wednesday to try to help us communicate better with the wee one. Abbie will be going this time around, too, in hopes of our learning a way to keep Luna from biting at her,pulling her hair and otherwise harassing her. I also hope to work on the "come" command and on heeling. I'm sure we'll come away with lots of homework. :)