One Year With Nova- December and January

Happy Adopion Day Nova Bear!!!

I can't believe it has been a whole year since we got Nova.  I've decided to re-cap her story month by month to celebrate and look back on the past year.  Mostly I want to say she is an amazing dog who has taught me so much about training, how dogs brains work and areas where I wasn't quite doing things right.  BUT if the person who bred her mother then let her puppies end up on the street is out there I want them to know they have done a horrible thing, and no matter how great Nova is today, she never should have existed in the first place.  The reason I ended up with a quivering disaster of a dog in my house is because I was cleaning up other people's careless messes and I wish I never had to do that.  I do however, still love her and here is our story, part 1 of 6.

 

When we first got her home she wouldn't even stand up.  She just crept along the ground and huddled frozen in any corner she could.  She was totally shut down and we had no idea what dog was under there.  So we put her in a crate, put a thundershirt on her and ignored her completely.  We would leave food for her when we left the house and it got eaten, but never when we were home.  Copley cuddled with her and Kerri whined a lot, but the people pretended she wasn't there.  The first little bit was pretty rough for her.  Being plucked off the street and put in a house had to have been like an alien abduction for her.  I do believe all she ever knew was the outdoors and I have serious doubts that she was ever owned by anyone.  It was rough too because she had to keep going back to the vet for dressing changes on her rear feet where half torn off dew claws were removed all the way.  I began to think she would huddle in the back of that crate for months.  Then about a week later I saw this.

I honestly could not believe it.  That really was the first moment I saw her stand up straight.  I'm glad my first thought was to take a picture so Ben could see how short she was.  I really had thought she was taller.

Now we had a dog who stood up.  Great.  Lets see what the next step is.  That is how we tackled everything, particularly in the beginning.  I couldn't think about next month, or next year, or how I was going to live with her, I just had to do one thing at a time.  What is the next step after crawling around on the ground in fear?  Standing up straight with her tail tucked between her legs.  Great.  Mission accomplished. 

Now that we had a dog who stood up I expanded her world a little outside of the crate.  She was in the living room right next to the Christmas tree and to be honest sometimes I thought she would live in that pen for the rest of her life.  I still could only touch her by cornering her (something that made me more than a little anxious) but she was warming up to the world.  I sat in that pen and spent hours getting her used to a collar, or at least associating good things with it.  She got a grasp of the clicker in there too.  That clicker was the only thing she connected with early on.  It was consistent, she controlled it and it was not human.  To this day it is our primary tool with her, and her list of clicker tricks is growing by the day.

You may notice a pillow in that pen.  It was there because my amazing husband was sleeping in there at the time so she could get used to people and wouldn't be alone at night.  We didn't yet realize that Nova hated him any more than she hated any other person and he thought it would be a good way to bond with her.  It was then that I realized my husband was in fact the most incredible person on earth and I could not possibly be luckier to have found him.  How many people would sleep on the ground of a dog pen for three weeks so that a chihuahua who you could not touch wouldn't be lonely?

Over the next several weeks I managed to get a collar on her.  Unfortunately she managed to get it right off again.  Or even worse stuck on something or in her mouth.  I saved her from strangulation on two occasions before we realized that collars were not something Nova would be wearing.  Or at least not dog collars.  I wanted her to wear a collar because she was a flight risk, but obviously it was not safe for her.  I got the great idea to get a quick release cat collar.  So I put it on her, she pulled it off, I put it on her, she pulled it off, I put it on her, she pulled it off and in we went for the next few months.  Did I mention that literally every time I cornered her to put it on I cringed, afraid that this would be the time she bit me?  In all the time we had her so far she never snapped at me, that is truly a testament to her temperament.  In case you were thinking of plucking your own traumatized chihuahua off the street I want you to know cornering a scared dog is a bad idea, you should never do it.  I cringe to think of some of the situations I put us in together early on, and I don't know I would do it again, and certainly not ever with a dog any bigger.

December brought us a dog who stood up in our presence, but never left a pen in the living room.  It brought us a dog who would eat while we watched, but would not sleep, or even close her eyes with us in the room.  She was scared all of the time.  Scared when the other dogs ran too fast, scared when anything new was in the house, scared of anything she saw us do.

This was during the two days we tried umbilical training.  Ben almost lost a toe and Nova nearly broke her neck.  It was a great idea for most people but you sometimes need to recognize when you are not "most people."

Near the beginning of January I tried working with her to take food from my hand.  It was not going swimmingly but she was getting closer and closer.  Then a friend came over and Nova decided he was the person that she trusted.  She ate right out of his hand and I informed him he had to move into my spare room.  Unfortunately he had his own place and wasn't looking for a job as a full time dog rehabilitator, but was over a lot and every time he came he gave Nova a handful of food.  Every time she took it.  By the end of the month she was taking food from me, and Ben if she thought she was actually stealing it from him.  If Ben looked like he WANTED her to have the food she hid.  But if he was giving treats to another dog, or eating a bowl of cereal she would try to steal that.  Baby steps.

Maybe...

 If I just...

 ABORT, ABORT MISSION

January was a pretty rough month.  It was when we discovered Nova was not a dog.  She was in fact a Ninja.  First I would come home and find her out of the pen.  At first we thought she was burrowing under it.  So we piled things around to weigh it down.  She still got out.  Then I thought she was going on top of the crate to get there so I relocated her to the spare room with the pen in the doorway.  That was when I saw her climb it.  She climbed that pen like it was not even an obstacle.  In fact she started climbing anything she wanted to get over or out of.  She was getting braver and her smarts were starting to show.  This made me happy, but it also has led to endless frustration.

The only other exciting development of January was when I was upstairs on the computer (we have a loft that at that time was blocked off from the dogs but I could see down) and I think she forgot I was home.  I looked down as her and Kerri played with a toy they got for Christmas.  It was a Martha Stewart Elf that had no stuffing but made a crinkly noise.  They full out played, we are talking play bows and throwing the toy up in the air and the whole bit.  Then Nova saw me and ran back into her crate and started to shake.  That was the day that I knew this was going to be ok.  If she can play with Kerri we have her!  She is not so broken that she is non-functional, we just need to manufacture more circumstances where she can function.

So there is December and January for you.  I will update on the next 10 months this week.

Nova

We volunteer for a local dog rescue.  As you might remember that is how Ben fell in love with Chihuahuas and we got Kerrigan.  Well down on their luck chis are sort of our soft spot over here.  I saw a picture of this girl and I immediately offered to foster her (can you guess why?).  Funny thing is the picture said she was a he, but that is neither here nor there.  It turns out that this girl and her two dead puppies were found in the back of a tire store where they had been living for at least a few weeks.  She was caught and brought to a vets office but they were filling up for holiday boarding and she needed somewhere to go.  The rescue warned me that she might be a runner and to watch my front door so I knew she might be a bit scared, but when I showed up I saw the most frightened chihuahua I have ever seen in my life.  This little girl is just a shaking pile of defeated dog.  From the way she acts at home it is apparent she has never lived in a house before and everything scares her.  

The far dog is Nova
 

I knew immediately she was not a foster dog, she was a forever dog.  She needs a home with stable dogs her size, no children now or ever, a person who is home a lot, and owners with lots of dog experience.  She needs a secure yard and no access to the front door, and while money is not everything she could certainly use someone who can afford a behaviorist and later group classes.  She needs a home where everyone in it is 100% on board and all of the family members love dogs, and people who realize it may be years or never before she is confident enough to be in a busy place.  How many homes are like that?  Mine is so she is staying.  Nova has been let down for the last time.  The people who she learns to love next will be the ones she grows old with.

I realize you can not rescue every dog.  I have let many fosters I love dearly, some even with special needs, go to their forever homes so I can do it.  I can recognize that dogs need our help not our pity and that being a foster failure means I can help less dogs in the future but Nova is special.  She is ours.

If I Were Getting a Dog... Part 1- Books

We over here at DogInTheDesert have a few friends thinking of becoming dog owners.  This inspired me to write some posts about what I would make sure to have if I was getting a dog for the first time.  Hindsight is 20/20 after all.

In the first part of this series we will be covering...

Books

We read a lot of books before we got Copley and they were extremely helpful.  I see a lot of new dog owners do a lot of nutty things and reading a bit about dogs can really help you avoid screwing the dog up totally in your first few desperate weeks of owning them.  I have gotten my list of must reads down to a manageable three books and here they are-

• For the Love of A Dog, by Patricia McConnell.  While the title makes it sound like a mushy book about loving dogs it actually is a fascinating book full of facts about dogs and the way they experience life.  The most vital part about this book in my opinion is it's in depth look at canine body language.  So many dog-human issues are caused by people being blind to the signals their dogs are sending them.  After reading this book you will never be blind to your dog's emotions again (ok, that was an exaggeration, they are confusing sometimes, but it will help).  If you are really feeling like some reading Patricia McConnell has a few other books and all of them are great.
• Cesars Way, by Cesar Millan.  Be careful with this one, because for some reason dog people seem to hate Cesar Milan with a fiery passion.  I really don't get it.  Just like every other book I read it has some great info and some not so great info.  Understanding how your energy effects your dog and how picking a dog of the proper energy level really makes a lot of sense to me.  His emphasis on exercise and calm leadership seem like great ideas.  Until one of the people out there shouting "Cesar Millan is evil" can tell me something horrible about his training style that is actually in one of his books I will continue to recommend them. Maybe the hate comes from things he does on his TV show.  I wouldn't know, I don't have cable.
• Feed Your Pet Right by Marion Nestle and Malden Nesheim.  This book has great info on dog nutrition.  It talks about everything from reading labels on commercial dog food to cooking your dog a well balanced diet.  No matter what you plan to feed this is a must read.  If you are fascinated by the pet food industry and don't mind a long rather complicated read you can pick up Nestle's other book Pet Food Politics.  If you make it to the end of that one and would like to be scared to ever eat anything ever again unless you grew it yourself then feel free to round out the series with Nestle's book on people food, Food Politics (this book actually came before the pet ones).

 Isn't is great how I wrote a whole post about dog advise without actually giving any?  Sometimes it is best to leave these things up to the professionals, so get to reading their books and hopefully I will have written the next post in this series by the time you get back.

No more puppy proofing

Our house is properly dog proofed all the time- but up until yesterday it had added levels of puppy proofing.  I am proud to announce all extra layers of puppy barriers have been removed.

When Kerrigan was 12 weeks old we had two gates keeping her in the living room, a 9 inch tall small animal pen discouraging her from crawling behind the TV and another 9 inch tall pen keeping her out of the computer room but allowing Copley to jump it for access to the rest of the house.

The final piece of puppy proofing was one of said small animal pens keeping her out of the kitchen.  The dogs are not allowed in the kitchen at all.  We have taught them that there is an invisible barrier where the carpet meets the tile and they are not to cross it.  Copley takes this rule so seriously that he could be chasing a toy full out and stop immediately if it bounces into the kitchen, only to stare longingly at it from the threshold of the living room.

We enforce this rule for two main reasons.  First thing is that when someone is cooking it could be very dangerous in the kitchen.  Ovens open, sharp knives in the dishwasher, hot oil on the stove; it is no place for a dog.  The other reason is that dogs appreciate rules.  Having the kitchen there gives them some mental stimulation.  I do like that they can't just run around the downstairs without any regard for where they are going, they have to always think "this is my area- this is not- lets stay a little aware of where we are while we wrestle."

Kerrigan has been working on following this rule and was doing very well.  The pen was there just to help remind her not to go in there when I was not directly watching her.  It would have been impossible to teach her to stay out if she could just run in and out when I was not watching.  Finally yesterday we decided she was mature enough to behave without the pen and we were right.  It has now been two days and she has only had a few minor slip ups of a paw on the tile here or there.  She totally gets it and respects the invisible barrier.  Best of all I can stop tripping on that darn thing every time I walk out of the kitchen!

For a 6 month old puppy she really is doing very well.  I can't believe only three months ago she was this tiny little puppy who could really only be trusted in this pen.

They have been ours for longer than they have not

We adopted Copley when he was a year and a half.  In January he will turn 3.

We adopted Kerrigan when she was 3 months old.  In January she will be 6 months.

That means both these dogs will have officially lived with us for the majority of their lives.

When I first met Copley he has been in the pound for exactly 30 days.  His paperwork showed he did his intake and got his Bordatella/Distemper/Parvo vaccine on May 28th, we adopted him on June 27th.  Back then before I volunteered in rescue and before I knew Copley this didn't seem that odd to me.  But now I realize it was an amazing feat that almost no dog could accomplish, especially in this city. For thirty days he was locked in a kennel, thrown food once a day, cleaned up after and mostly ignored.  Now I am very familiar with the shelter he came from.  They are not huge like the shelter Kerri came from, but they are high kill.  Their very few animal control officers do what they can, but the dogs don't ever get walked.  If they are lucky a potential adopter can walk them around a very small courtyard where they are being barked at in plain view of all the other dogs.  This shelter does not have a lot of volunteers, the dogs don't have toys and beds are old and scarce.  At least it is clean and the workers have always seemed kind but there is only so much they can do.

For 30 days Copley was in this place.  For 30 days he stayed healthy- because if he had even coughed he would have been put down.  Every morning he greeted the people at the shelter with a happy wag and hope they would come pet him.  Unlike so many dogs he didn't get scared, or protective of his kennel or his food.  He probably did not so much as growl or he would have been labeled aggressive and been killed.  And on top of that he avoided being euthanized just because his number was up.  Was there unusually low intake?  Unlikely.  Did the animal control officer who so joyfully said goodbye to him see how good of a dog he was and help him stay around?  Was he part of a court case and didn't get put out for adoption until later in the month?  I guess I will never know.

We spend a lot of time talking about what his life was like before he lived with us.  His previous owner was not totally irresponsible.  He was neutered, house-trained, well fed and taught a few tricks.  There were several dogs who all looked like Copley in varying ages at the shelter that month.  I assume they all came in together.  They were not owner-surrendered because they did not have names, only numbers.  At that shelter the dogs without names stay without names and the dogs turned in by owners keep their names.  We have lots of theories, some based on little things we notice, about his previous owners but we will never really know.  I just hope he doesn't miss them anymore and that while he was with them they treated him well.

The only thing I really know is that the dog that went into that shelter is not the dog that came out.  Not the dog I know today.  There is no way our Copley made it through thirty days locked in a kennel like that without some major trauma.  We can't make up for those days, nor is sitting on the couch hugging him and feeding him treats going to make it better (although a little of that helps).  We give him a stable pack, with lots of structure and lots of love.  We go on long hikes and we do agility and rally and got our CGC.  Actually we do a lot of agility.

At our training center Copley just lights up.  He loves the place and the people and is a total nut while he is there.  He just hams it up for all the trainers and they just love on him.  For a long time I kept telling them that the happy-go-lucky dog they see at class is not the slightly worried, always lazy, structure-craving dog we have at home but I could not explain it.  Then Ben said something that makes perfect sense to me; "I think that the way Copley is at class is the way he was before the shelter."  I agree, that it probably close to the truth.

That was long but really all I needed to say was that Copley has now officially been with us for the majority of his life.  I hope he knows he is here to stay and we are lucky to have adopted one of the best dogs on the planet.  He is the friendliest, coolest dog out there and we love him very much.

_________________________________________________________________



Now Kerrigan is a bit of different story.  We were very prepared to bring her into our lives, having bought all the puppy supplies and such that we needed.  I stalked the shelters for a little chihuahua puppy to call our own.  Being that we live in the Irresponsible Breeding of Chihuahuas and Pit Bulls Capital of the World I saw several litters go through the shelters while we were still preparing for a second dog.  Finally all the baby gates and pens and vitamins came in the mail and Ben wanted to go to the shelter right away.  It was a big city shelter that has a bit of a spotty past and HUGE intake and euthanasia numbers.  I knew Ben did not have the willpower to leave that place without a dog.  Not sure I did either.  I had seen her listed online that morning so I was on the lookout for her.

We saw her and she was just too cute and tiny to let stay in that place.  I brought Copley to meet her, he was the one who had veto power over the situation.  If he had growled or showed dislike we would not have done it but he accepted her and it was a done deal.

The way I see it Kerrigan never had a family before us.  Her mother and her litter-mates were her family, then she had a brief time at the shelter (she was put out for adoption only hours before we adopted her) and then she made it to us.  She was a social butterfly in puppy class and I hope she is even on track to become a therapy dog some day when she calms down a little bit.  I don't think she worries for a minute about being abandoned and I doubt she has a lot of memory of her time before us.  I think whoever had her had bought a cute puppy off Craigslist then realized they were in over their heads and gave up.  Off to the shelter it was for her.

In her time here she has gained about 2 lbs, outgrown a collar, and gone from a lanky, goofy puppy who could barely keep her legs under her to an agile spring of a young dog, sure footed and strong willed.  We still have many months left of puppy-hood before our work is done but so far it has been great.  Getting a puppy from a shelter is kinda like playing the lotto with personalities, but I think we hit the jackpot.

I will leave you with these two pictures.  Both were taken the first day we had them, Kerri's in the car before we pulled out of the parking lot of the pound and Copley's shortly after he was home with us.  They didn't even have names yet.  I think they both have the same look on their face.  Probably thinking "who the hell are you and what is going on?"

House Training

Kerrigan is doing great!  I thought I would post an update on everything she has learned in the months we have had her but then I went on a rant about potty training so I guess I will be making this into two posts.

She is 99% potty trained.  I really don't get why people think potty training a puppy is so hard (ok I do get it but it has way more to do with the stupidity and laziness of humans than the inability of their dogs to learn).  It really was not difficult at all.  Only thing it required was consistency and near constant supervision when she was out and allowed to run around.  When we could not watch her we kept her in a playpen, when she was out we made sure to take her to pee every hour or so.  When she went outside she got a treat, if we caught her going inside we said no and brought her outside really fast.  Once she started scratching at the door to go out we tried to wait until she asked before taking her out, gradually letting her go longer and longer before making her go outside in the hoes that she would ask first.  As of the last few weeks we have only had accidents when she asks to pee but we are not paying attention to the door.  She has such tiny paws and they make so little noise.  I was thinking of getting a bell but am worried Copley might REALLY enjoy ringing it.  Oh, and she also knows the command "Go Pee" and will squeeze out any pee she can, that's handy for when we are about to leave.

She also is we we pad trained.  That has been a big help with her as a puppy but not something I think I will continue into the future.  We did it because she can only hold it for a few hours and sometimes we have to leave for longer than that.  Right now she is doing good holding it for 4 hours during the day while we are gone, or 6 hours at night while she is asleep.  When we leave for 4 hours or less she is crated, more than 4 hours and we leave her with a pee pad in her pen.  When we first got her our limit was 2 hours, but she has been doing a lot of growing since then.

So in summary- housetraining is not rocket science.  There may be the occasional dog that is difficult to train and of course puppymill survivors (they are a whole different story) but other than that it is not hard.  I really have no patience for the many many people out there who have had dogs for a year and they still are not housetrained.  I blame 99% of that on laziness, ignorance and general stupidity.  For the 1% of you out there with dogs who really are genuinely having trouble with potty training despite your absolute best efforts, don't be offended, keep up the good work.

A woman I take agility class with told me that her boss would only hire people who had successfully housetrained a puppy, but unfortunately they can't ask people that in their interviews.  That is probably sound logic as housetraining is a simple task overall but requires the virtues of patience, persistence and control of rage even while sleep deprived.

I will leave you with a video of Kerri showing off.  You sill see she waits at the door until released then goes immediately to her potty spot when I tell her to.  I left out the actual peeing part, it seemed a little gross for the blog.

One Dogs Toy is Another Dogs Bed

Observe- Kerrigan uses Copley's squeakey toy as a bed.

Introducing Kerrigan!

The puppy finally has a name!  It is Kerrigan or Kerri for short.

Settling on a name proved harder than it was for Copley.  With Copley we were still incredibly homesick for the east coast.  We named the little guy after a subway station that we both went through almost every day while living in Boston.  It has a nice ring to it, people out here have no idea how to say it and everyone back in Boston thought it was just perfect!

With this puppy it has been much harder.  We went through several names and didn't like any of them.  On Wednesday we settled on Flora because my husband likes plants a lot and frankly we were tired of coming up with other names.  I even got a name tag engraved that said Flora.  All along I knew it was not that great.  For starters I just could not imagine yelling "Flora" out on an agility course and on top of that no one would ever get the plant connection because Flora is also a normal woman's name.

Luckily last night after observing that we only really called her puppy and were totally ignoring Flora a friend of ours suggested a great idea for a name.  Kerrigan.  It is the name of a character in a video game both of us play.  The petite but feisty lady is turning out to really live up to her namesake, so long as she avoids being mind controlled my an alien race everything should turn out just great!

Unfortunately for some reason I seem to be taking a lot of shit for this name.  Kerri seems like a perfect name to me, short, sharp and easy for her to learn, plus it is cute and has a connection to something both of us like to do.  So what I named my dog after a video game character?  My other dog is named after a SUBWAY STATION and no one seems to think that is so strange.

Puppy!!!!!!!

We got our new puppy!  She is a little chihuahua, weighing in at a whopping 4.2 LBS at 13 weeks.  We got her from the city shelter where according to their website they had 243 dogs available and 60 were chihuahuas.  So if you are interested in adopting a Chi and live in the Las Vegas area you should know Lied animal shelter (aka The Animal Foundation) has plenty.

Here she is!  I keep trying to take pictures at night, when the light is not so good, I promise better pictures tomorrow during sunlight hours!

The puppy says hi!

Copley asks "What have you done to me?"

 

The little lady was having some trouble with the raw chicken so we gave her a break and are cooking it.  At this point she is getting fed three meals a day of seared chicken (very rare) and yogurt in a kong along with a multivitamin, calcium supplement and a pro-biotic.  The hardest thing about these is that they are miniature amounts.  One of the supplements she gets 1/16th of a teaspoon split into 3 meals!  How do you even really measure that?

 If her tummy manages to stay settled we will be adding some veggies and some kinds of fattier meat tomorrow.  The vet said she is a little skinny for a puppy, but that is expected after four days at a shelter.  I could probably use starvation tactics to get her to take the chicken raw, but since we have the calcium supplements as a raw bone replacement we can go on with cooked meat until she gets a little weight on her.

That is all for now!  I will be doing more updates on the puppy very soon.

I am going to own a Chihuahua- WHAT?!?!

Or maybe this post should be titled- "It turns out I already own a chihuahua, and now we are getting another one- WHAT?!?!?"

I should start by saying that when we first got Copley me and Mr. DogInTheDesert had very different ideas about dogs.  At 22lbs Copley was the absolute smallest dog I was willing to adopt and the biggest dog my spouse was willing to adopt.  Copley was listed as a pug/beagle mix and I thought that was pretty cool.  Beagles are great dogs, laid back but still have that rugged outdoor-ness of a hunting dog.  Pugs are just adorable so it seemed all good.  It turned out that he was the best dog we could have hoped to adopt.  What can I really say about him?  He is just the most rockin dog ever known to man (I might be biased).

Knowing that one day we would want to adopt another dog I decided it would be good to volunteer us to work with large breed dogs of some sort.  I found an organization that specialized in bully breeds.  "Perfect" I thought "My spouse will learn how lovable these big dogs are, pit bulls are perfect because they are really just loveable goof balls, and through one of the most misunderstood breeds out there he will learn that big dogs are the best!"

It was a good thought.  He did learn to love the pits, how could you not?  We walk them and go to adoption events and have become all around pit bull advocates.

Unfortunately this rescue led us down a path I never expected.  Our city shelters are mostly filled with two kinds of dogs- pits and chihuahuas.  Chihuahuas were difficult to avoid in the rescue community and Mr. DogInTheDesert loves them.  I have to admit, they are the perfect dog for him.  They like to cuddle and sit on his lap while they play computer games, he can carry them around with him and they are just plain cute.  After careful consideration (and finding ways to over come the fact that we are outdoorsy people and a chihuahua is really just hawk bait) I have finally come to terms with owning one.  Our plan is to start looking in a few weeks.  More on that later.

As a sort of icing on the chihuahua cake we got Copley's DNA test back.  50% Chihuahua.  Turns out I owned one all along and didn't even know it.  As someone who always imagined owning a rottweiler or a husky or a shepherd it is taking some getting used to the fact that I soon will own one and a half chihuahuas.

Introduction

Since adopting our dog Copley a little over a year ago I have been thrown headfirst into the world of dogs.  I have volunteered with a private rescue, taken classes with show dogs (and their owners and breeders) and encountered many other dog owners at the pet store, park and even in my neighborhood.


While these people all have very different points of view they share three basic qualities.

1. They have opinions about how you should raise your dog.
2. They are convinced they are right.
3. They are not afraid to share their opinion with you no matter how crazy and misguided their opinion is.

I really try to listen to what people have to say, understand it, and take it to heart, but sometimes I wish there was more of a healthy debate about things.

 

So that brings me to this blog.  If I am too polite to tell people how I think it is in the real world why not hide behind the anonymity of the internet to share my thoughts and experiences as a dog owner?  Even if no one reads it at least I will have the illusion of getting my ideas out.

Plus... don't tell Copley... but we are going to be getting a new puppy.  I am sure the puppies grandparents are going to want to be reading so they can watch their new four legged grand-kid grow up.