Sleepy Time

Travis' way of helping out with Lucy is sleeping with her. She sleeps on the couch with him. Often times she sleeps around his head, on top of him, or stretched long in front of him. Sometimes she is sleeping in the middle and he squishes on the rest of the couch, not moving her, which I think is nice. She likes to be under covers, as the house is often in the 50's. Lucy is holding her new orange terry cloth bone, which was 72 cents and she thinks it is the greatest. She loved her Christmas, especially her bird house where she has to get the 3 birds out. She sticks her whole face in and runs around like that, it is quite funny. I guess she had a blast with Travis' family. She likes to put things in your lap so she spent her day placing squishy balls, bones and stuffed birds in people's laps. His uncle Warren, who is 86 years old, had fun playing on the floor with her. He wanted to take her home with him. She loved all of her new toys. Her barker collar should be arriving shortly and hopefully it works and puts this horrible, loud, pointless barking to rest. We are also going to work on not biting people, not going potty in the kitchen, staying off the coffee table, and not eating the rug this week when I have time off to use her trainer collar. Wish me luck. I just want a good puppie doggie with good puppie doggie habits. She just bites so hard when she gets excited and it hurts. Bad. It is only when she is excited though, not all the time. Merry Christmas to you all!

Woah! Look at My Cat!

Timmie Lee is 9 years old now. For some reason, she sits on her butt like a human and puts her back legs out in front of her. She sits like this all the time. It cracks me up every time. She is very large. Lucy and Timmie Lee generally do not mind each other but the other day they went nose to nose and Timmie's hair stood up on end, she slicked her ears back and hissed. Lucy just sat there looking at her, and gave a small woof. Timmie was upset and so Travis took Lucy away and I went to pet and comfort Timmie and she slapped me! Usually they just ignore each other. But I just wanted to share a picture of Timmie with you guys who never get to see my large kitty!

Santa Came Early For Lucy...

Santa came early this year for Lucy. Sometimes she just needs something new to stimutate her curious puppy mind. I gave her that neat squeaker blanket that has a squeaker in each square. It is quite fun. I also gave her the Intelli-bone, which is a bone, w/ squeakers in it, with donuts around it, which crinkle and squeak also. She LOVES it. She is supposed to try to get the donuts off but it is even hard for me, so we pull the yellow ones off for her to play with alone. Lucy did great getting spayed. She has not licked her stitches at all, and did not have to wear the huge lampshade. I am glad. We get the stitches out on Tue. I keep telling Lucy that before stitching her back up the vet must have stuffed her full of sweetness b/c she came back sweeter! I got her new tone collar in the mail, and it also vibrates, but does NOT shock. It is charging. I am hoping to teach her to quit biting people, not to chew the rug and to stay off of the coffee table. Peeing on the kitchen floor in front of Travis needs to stop also. She only tells me that she has to go out, I guess b/c I take her out. He does not often and so she just pees in the house when he is around. He should be zapped for that, not her b/c it is not her fault he ignores her need to go out a lot. She is still small.

A Much Needed Nap After Playing So Long...

Lucy gets up in the morning and litereally plays, runs, prances, and jumps on and off the couch over and over, for 4-5 hrs straight. Then she is worn out. After all the excitement of waking up to start a new day, she will take a long nap each morning. Sometimes she sticks her tongue out, or sleeps with her tail or her back foot in her mouth. It is quite cute. Other times, like this morning, she slept like this (I agree, she is quite un-lady like.) We are still having trouble with her potty training, and she BITES. I ordered her a "tone collar" today that we can use to break these habits by pushing a button and a tone that is annoying, safe, and only heard by doggies, goes off to startle her and correct her behavior. I seriously just want to enjoy my puppy but it is hard when I spend all day looking at her butt to see if she is going potty (sometimes how she sits looks like she is squatting to potty) and I just want to ENJOY HER CUTE FACE!!! Lucy is so adorable it is hard to scold her but she is naughty! She was STANDING on the coffee table today. Quite bad. But hopefully this collar will help us enforce better "puppy habits."

"Eat Your Dinner Lucy Pants!"

Feeding Lucy has never been hard. She used to plow me over, stepping in and spilling her water, and knocking the measuring cup of food from my hands to get her puppy chow. Then I made a mistake and to get her to come up to the kitchen when we were leaving, and had to put the gate up, I would put a couple chow morsels in her bowl and she would run right up to the kitchen. Easy. Now she learned and when I fill her bowl, she will not come into the kitchen by her place mat to eat. She thinks I am going to put the gate up. She sits on the top step of the stairs and looks at you. I couldn't get her to eat the other day, so I put one morsel on each step leading up to her bowl. It worked but only that time. Now I have to put her bowl at the top of the steps and she leans up from the first step to eat. What a challenge! She isn't as eager to eat like before. I don't know if it is just too much food at once, but she eats and takes a break, eats. Bassets are not grazers, they eat all their food at once so you can only feed them twice a day or she would eat all day long and get big and tubby large! It could also be that her teeth hurt her because her front "fang" teeth came out the other day and those are vital to eat. When she is put down for surgery, they are going to clean her teeth and see how many she has lost, and how they are growing in. (If they are not straight, what do they do? Give her head gear?!) I tell her every day, as I sit on the top step feeding her one puppy chow morsel at a time from my hand "Eat your dinner (breakfast) Lucy. You have to get big and strong!" Travis just shakes his head and says "She is so spoiled." She is. The red bowl she is eating out of like a good puupy is a plastic "Milkbone" bowl the people gave us when we adopted her.

Hide And Seek Games

Lucy turned 6 months old today. How exciting. I had my 1st eBay experience and got her some cool things for Christmas, including a neat squeaker blanket with 16 speakers in it! Oh, I actually gave that to her for her 6 month birthday. She goes in on Monday at 7:30 am to be spayed. She has to stay over night and it makes me so sad. I am bringing her space ship blankie and Aqua Dog. Both can wash. Travis has training in Baraboo Mon and Tue so when we bring her home, I am on my own. On another note, she doesn't seem to mind the cold. Rain or shine, I walk her. Yesterday she did get ice between her toes and didn't want to put her foot down so Travis carried her back in from outside. She loves to jump in the snow and eat it! Lucy hides her bones all over the house, in the couch cushions, under blankets, in any corner she can find. She then will "bury" it by pushing "dirt" over it with her nose, over and over and over. She has bones "hidden" on the stairs, in the chair, and behind her toy box. She makes us laugh. I got her a set of toys with a soft orange plush squeaker bone and she carries it everywhere and brought it up to bed last night. It is fun to see what she chooses each day to play with and what she takes to bed at night. We weighed her yesterday and she is about 33 lbs! Wow! She has lost 8 teeth that I know of and is just gi-normous! Oh Sara, I have had no luck teaching Lucy to kiss without her tongue, but I will keep trying!