Puppy Update

By request (and I've been meaning to do it)- a puppy update!

We finally did come up with a name for our beautiful pup.

Meet.... Violet! From the beginning, we really wanted to stick with a flower name, if at all possible, to go with Daisy. There are lots of options using flowers, but our favorite was Violet. We call her Vi, too (cute, huh?)

We have also sold all of the pups! We have been pup free now for 3 weeks (besides our own). It is always fun to have them, but we are never sad to see them go. 12 weeks with them is plenty at the end. Above is the last 5 pups we had. I thought it was so cute that they fell asleep in this "dog pile." They did it often.

In the middle of May, my little sister Catherine drove up from Idaho to pick up my parent's pup and take it home. She spent a few days with us and we loved having her. Here she is helping to give Jimmer the pup his first bath (Ben did most of the work, let's be honest).

She did do most of the blow drying, though. All nice and clean for the long ride home!

We love having visitors, especially Catherine. She is great company for me and a great play mate for the kids. Come back soon!

Everyone gave Jimmer kisses goodbye. We'll see him soon, though.

To try and sell the remaining few, Ben took the big kids up to Cabela's sporting goods store south of here in Lacey one Saturday late in May. They parked out behind the parking lot of the store where puppies are notoriously sold numerous weekends of the year. The kids had a great time, Ben said.

They attracted lots of attention with these pretty little pups.

But of course, the rain came and they moved the kennel and the sign in to the van to keep dry.

The kids stayed busy (and dry) watching a movie in the car.

But it was a successful trip- 3 pups were sold on that day alone.

We are loving having just Violet now with all the other ones gone.

Ben spends as much time as he can training her. If you can see in this picture, Ben is using one of his hand signals to train her (a flat, open palm, hand in the air means "stay").

In the last week or so, she has become way more energetic than she ever has been and gets very excited when anyone comes outside. This has resulted in her jumping up on people more. She is much bigger now, too, so if she jumps up to greet the babies, they get knocked around a little. Leah does not love that, as can be seen above.

Lexi got her to sit, though.

Puppies are cute and can be so much fun, but oh my, they are a lot of work. Here is our lawn, or what is left of part of it. This is where Violet (and Daisy) love to lay for naps and they have worn the grass right off. And all the white things are a bucket that Violet chewed to bits. Puppies are chewers and many things have fallen victim to Vi in the last few weeks. Sometimes when I look out into our backyard, I wonder if we've had a storm of some sort. Our lawn is often strewn with chunks and pieces of random objects that are no longer whole.

We purposely did not do anything with our yard until all the puppies were gone. We are now working at getting our lawn in order and back in shape, and to help do this we have put an invisible fence up to keep Vi out of our garden/flower areas and only on one chunk of the lawn. We buried wires and put this shot collar on her (the green and blue thing around her neck). When she gets near the off limit area, the collar will beep to give her a warning and if she tries to cross it, it will give her a shock/zap to the neck. We tried it out the first night and it definitely worked. The only problem is- someone keeps chewing the collar off her. This has happened 3 times. We don't know if she's chewing it off herself, or if Daisy is doing it for her. One or both of them is also chewing the wire as well. It is SO FRUSTRATING. We just can't have nice things!

When the collar gets chewed off, it doesn't work (obviously) and we kennel the dogs to keep them from further chewing the wire until Ben gets home and can fix the shot collar (again). The kennel is the one place that Vi can't really do any damage. It works as a time out, if you will. Some days I want to keep her in there ALL the time... :)

But most of the time, she is fun and we love having her. (MOST of the time...)

She is a beautiful pup, though. She's growing like a weed and hardly looks like a pup anymore, until you compare her to Daisy. She'll be full grown before we know it, and hopefully trained and as mellow and sweet as Daisy is. If not, we'll have ONE MORE PUP up for sale soon! :)