Perspectives of a Canadian in the Old/Deep/New/Geographic South: This is where I ramble on about nothing in particular and post a few nice pictures.
Pet related posts
This is the position we usually find Nala in most often. Crashed on the kitchen floor, partly on her back and partly on her side. Growing dogs need their sleep I guess. She’s 3 months old now, and in the 2 weeks since we’ve had her she’s already put on 5 pounds and is up to 25 pounds now. She’s going to have to start learning how to walk down the stairs on her own before she starts getting too big to carry.
This week I get to be a stay-at-home dad for Nala. Need to work on some training and education for her. She can be very stubborn when she doesn’t want to do something. When we go outside for walks, as long as she’s within sight of the apartment, all she wants to do is run back inside. Take her out of sight, and home is completely forgotten and she goes about doing her doggy things. She likes to smell everything, and for some strange reason she always wants to crunch on rocks (which we take out of her mouth as soon as she tries to grab one). Maybe they look like food or something to her. She isn’t quite at the stage where she can hold something in her mouth while walking, so we can’t keep her mouth busy with something else to keep her from picking up rocks to munch on.
She’s fun to watch running around chasing a ball at the tennis court, although she has all the attention span of a gnat (as my wife says), so you constantly have to grab it and bounce it around for her to chase after. Otherwise she pounces at it, chews it a bit and moves on to something she thinks is more interesting, like leaves to munch on.
It’s been a couple of days now, and I think Nala seems to be settling in. She’s definitely got personality. One minute she’s a couch potato sprawled out on the kitchen floor taking up as much space as she possibly can, the next minute she’s tearing through the living room chasing a ball and almost colliding with the walls in the process. And just as suddenly she stops dead and stares at what’s going happening on the TV. She heads off to the corner and sulks if we punish her, but happily comes when we offer a treat.
She likes the short little walks outside we take her for. She’ll carry her end of the leash in her mouth while she’s walking. We probably need to stop that and replace it with a bone or something for her to carry around instead of the leash.
This is Nala, the newest member of our family. We picked her up yesterday from the breeder, Fortune Labrador after a 10 week wait. She’ll be 11 weeks on Monday. Isn’t she just so cute looking? That’s a Puppy Kong chew toy she’s trying to figure out.
Her first night with us was a little bit stressful (as expected), but she’s doing all right now. She’s learning the lay of the kitchen, but still cries a bit when she’s left alone. The hard part is trying to figure out the difference between the ‘Give me attention’ whine and the ‘Gotta go to the bathroom’ whine.
She hasn’t quite figured out how to play when she’s the leash, but we’re working on that. She’s young, so it doesn’t take much to tire her out. A few short training sessions teaching her Sit and Down, and then a short trip outside for a bit of a walk pretty much does it for her at this point. So far she’s a lot of fun to have around, except for the 2AM bathroom break. We’re really looking forward to when she’s a little bit older and we can teach her more interesting tricks.
The wife and I have decided to get a dog. She’s wanted to get one for a long time now, and after humming and hawing over what kind of dog to get, we settled on a Labrador Retriever. Last year she was all about Miniature Schnauzers. A few months ago, she decided to get something bigger that could also help fend off marauding strangers, so for a while we were considering German Shepherd dogs. We wanted a dog that would get along nicely with other dogs too, so finally we decided on the Lab.
Now we need to consider a time frame. I pushed for recyling a dog and getting one from the local Lab rescue group, or starting off by volunteering with them. But she wants to buy new. Fortunately, there seems to be a couple of prominent breeders in the area and not very far away for us to check out. That will be our next step.