Territorial Bloggings

Another event that I’ve been remiss in documenting was a few weeks ago, when we agreed to dog-sit for one of Deb’s co-workers. The thing is, the dog to be sat was a 9 month old puppy. A 9 month old Boxer puppy. That already weighed 50-60 lbs!

Needless to say, this provided some interesting situations & interactions between our fur babies (who consider themselves to be big dogs trapped in little dog bodies — Holly in particular…), and Shelby, who is still a very exuberant baby girl growing into an already big (and still growing) body.

Here are some thumbnails of the festivities…

We eventually worked out a system where we rotated “free time” for the dogs, because it got to a bit much for them to all be out together all the time. This worked out quite nicely, as we’ve found that Hammie tends to be a bit over-protective of Holly in situations where other dogs are involved, which can be problematic, given Holly’s penchant for initiating roughhousing-type play.

All-in-all, it was a great experience. Shelby is a sweetheart — if I ever had to have a big dog, I could see getting a Boxer. That said, I still don’t want to get a big dog — I like my little doggies. Give me my BT fur babies, ’cause they are the very best you can get!

-ghp

I’m slack. I forgot to get photos documenting Holly Jean’s 1st birthday posted in a timely fashion. There’s not much I can say to mitigate that slackness, nor can I really add anything to enhance the cuteness that is Miss Holly Jean. So, I’ll leave you with one photo of what she looked like back when we got her, and several of what she looks like now, in her full-grown state.

She’s 14 pounds of Queen of the House sweetness, energy, snuggling, and (above all) kissing (like most BTs, she’ll lick you ’til the cows come home & then she’ll lick the cows! )!

-ghp

Well, my two week break is over. Tomorrow, it’s back to work (for me), school (für die Kinder), & the mud room (for Holly).

Several times during the past two weeks, I felt almost guilty, like I wasn’t getting done what I should. At those times, I tried to remind myself of why I took the two weeks off: 1) to watch the kids, so that we didn’t have to pay for daycare during their holiday break, and 2) to watch the new puppy, helping her get acclimated to her new home (esp. in the form of house-training her…).

I’m pretty sure that I’ve blogged before on my tendency to, shall we say, underperfrom/achieve in the face of large chunks of free time. This was certainly the case in the past two weeks, somewhat understandably fueled by the fact that Holly needed lots & lots of close supervision — meaning that I wasn’t able to do a whole lot of anything that required undisturbed concentration.

That all said, I’m willing to pin my rationalization (and, thus, my positive state of mind) on the vocational argument that realizes and accepts that I fulfilled the two main reasons/goals I had for taking the time off of work. Namely, I was able to watch the kids & keep from having to send them to daycare. Money was saved & lots of good time was spent with them. Second, I think that I was quite successful in helping Holly get properly integrated into her new home. She isn’t fully housetrained, but then what 10 week old pup would be? She is, however, making good progress, and seems to understand the basic premise. She is also showing herself to be much more comfortable with her new surroundings and, in particular, her new big brother Hammie. The two of them are now really starting to have fun romping & playing with each other, and then snuggling for a nap. And she’s growing like a weed, having gained a full pound in the past week, getting her up to a robust 4.2 lbs!

I know that returning to work will be a pain tomorrow (esp. given the backlog of work that’s resulted from one of my staff leaving with rather short notice recently…), but if it was all fun, it wouldn’t be work, now would it? ;^)

For those of you who might be interested, here are links to two new slideshows, one of Holly & Hammie snuggling, and the other of Holly’s first bath.

-ghp

They’ll be famous because photos of them have been submitted & posted to the Boston Terrier Photo Blog!

And to augment them, here are two more recent photos, one of Holly (up close & cute) and one of Hammie checking Holly out, and one older one of Hammie & Bwanna (from about a year before Bwanna died – i.e., about 4 years ago):

-ghp

Here are some video snippets from our first day with Holly. We brought her home yesterday (on her 2 month birthday) and we’ve all been having a good old time welcoming Holly into our home & family!

In case you’re wondering, the clips were shot with my Canon PowerShot S45 digital camera, edited in iMovie ’08, which also exported it automatically out to YouTube. Pretty nifty!
-ghp

Well, we’ve finally gone and done it — earlier today we drove out to the Nichols Happy Dog Kennel and put a down payment on the newest addition to our family, Holly Jean!

Click here to view a slideshow of the photoset at Flickr…

We’ll be going to pick Holly up & bring her home in two weeks. She’s still a bit young (born on 10/20/07) to bring home. I’ll also be taking two weeks vacation starting on 12/22 (actually only six vacation days, but combined with the 4 official holidays, it makes for a nice break, along with being able to keep from having to pay for child care during the kids’ Christmas break…), thus affording us a chance to ensure that Holly gets properly integrated into her new home.

She’s a sweet little thing, and it looks like she’ll be smaller than Hammie (our 5.5 y/o male BT, who weighs in at about 20 lbs), with the breeder’s guess being that Holly will top out at around 12-14 lbs.

I’m sure that photo ops will abound, and I’ll now have another topic to blog about in the new year, so as to offset any AI7 fatigue! ;^)

-ghp