Well I blew right past February in the Vivian updates! So I must reach back to remember all that she has learned and done….
In February we decided that Viv could sleep at night outside of the crate. I think we possibly started that too early, and while we had no major accidents we did have a few sleepless nights! In her ongoing attempt to perfectly train Peggy, Vivian would wake up in the night, cry, go to Greg’s side of the bed, cry, get nowhere, go to Peg’s side of the bed, place paws on bed and lay head on top of Peggy, cry and be lifted onto the bed! Yes, Vivian almost had me perfectly trained when much to her chagrin, I went on vacation with my Mom and left her home to train Greg. When it comes to allowing puppy on the bed at night he is apparently a tough cookie. She now comes to Peggy’s side of the bed, places paws and head across Peggy, waits until she realizes that nothing is going to happen and then goes back to her bed.
Spring is making an early appearance here in the Northwoods, and Vivian loves the warm weather and lack of snow. Of course at nearly 10 months, she is getting much more adventuresome and is testing her boundaries a bit. So back to work on recall. Just about the time I think I have her nailing it, she decides to dig in and ignore me. She has an uncanny way of knowing when there are treats (cut up hotdogs are her current fave) in the pocket and when there are not and recalls accordingly. Yesterday we worked on retrieving and had a blast until I threw the rope/ball thingy in the tree. If you look at past pictures on the blog you will see that throwing it high into a tree in our yard takes some skill as we only have a couple of trees in the middle of the yard.
Speaking of spring, Vivian chased her first mouse last week. She couldn’t catch it, but she did chase it. It reminded me of a sweet moment with Anna last spring. Greg had gone to bed and I let the dogs in from their before bed outing. Both Anna and Ike came running in the house and continued to run through the kitchen and living room, looping around the family room before I caught Anna. Anna obviously had something in her mouth and I put my hand down and firmly said “Drop it” at which point she dropped a dead mouse into my hand. Tail wagging she looked up at me with such joy on her 15-year-old poodle face, while I screamed and Greg yelled from the bedroom “wash your hands before you come to bed!”
Viv went to the groomer on Saturday and this is the picture of she and Ike on the way home. Thanks to Kelly of Bark Avenue Grooming in Bemidji for making my Vivian look so pretty!
puppyjackpot 