Poppy

I can't believe it's been a whole year since we got our shy little puppy home.. actually one year and some days to be precise since she turned one year old (7 human years) on January 15th. What with the crazy ice-storms and snow in Austin that day and my travel out of town the next week I couldn't organize a party for my baby:( but oh well... Vikram is really proud of her because she is no longer the shy puppy we first got home who hid from visitors... In fact she's pretty territorial now and funnily enough barks at male visitors only. She's still tentative about things and people though and will back off ever so slightly even as she barks her head off at a visitor - got to teach her to actually calm down now! She also recently gruffly told a 3 month old cute chocolate lab puppy we met at pet Smart to back off her face (and that broke both Vik and my hearts). She's 61 pounds and her human boyfriend at the vet still remembers her and goes ga-ga over her. She'...

I've just had a shower (above) and I am a stylish dog (below) :) After all the bragging on my blog about Poppy yesterday, I went home to more delightful behaviour, so I decided to brag some more today :) Poppy and I went for a pretty long walk last evening and on the way we met someone who was clearly uncomfortable with dogs. It was dark and he was standing stiff in the shadows by the park, so that we would pass him by and he could carry on. Poppy however did not like his body language at all and I guess for dogs it's like screaming out "I hate you, get out of my face!". So there she stood, poised to half-run away, half-attack growling menacingly and barking uncomfortably at the man. It was fun for me to watch because I had never seen that side of my sweet gentle Poppy before! The best part of the evening though was when we reached the end of our street. Chris, a neighbor in our community who is passionate about dogs and has helped us with tips and advice regarding pu...

...weighs 57.6 pounds and is turning out to be such a loving and intelligent dog. She surprises us all the time with her intelligence. For e.g. she'll look up at me and into my eyes when I say "look here". She of course already knew "sit", "stay" and "down" at 4 months. She also started rolling over at the command "over" after the puppy training. And we reward her with a nice belly-rub for that. Now she even knows "bring your toy" and will bring it from wherever it is (usually when we're going back inside the house after playing in the yard). We play a game of "find, where is it" with her by hiding her toys, so she knows that too. But the best of all is that she's started to recognize names. She knows my name, Vikram's name and will run to that person when their name is called and jump on them and lick them :) She also recognizes her buddy dog's names like Ruthie - the labradoodle, Sasha - the Dob...

She turned 6-months old yesterday. A little tid-bit - she HATES the vaccuum cleaner and becomes very anxious when it's on. That's the one time she'll readily go into her crate. But the sweetest thing is when I am done using it, she'll run to check on me and cuddle up to me to make sure I am alright. I love my dog :) Here are some pix from her 6th month birthday.

Her 6-class training course ended last evening. While we did not think it to be of much value-add since she already knew sit-stay and is generally already well-behaved, it did not result in any difference in her. Though, with a lot of other hyper puppies at the training we could tell the remarkable difference from Class 1 to Class 6. The biggest example (literally and figuratively) of this is Diego the 2-year old Great Dane. He was rambunctious and his handler had starting bleeding on Day 1. By Day 3 he was a completely changed dog! I couldn't believe my eyes! In fact at an exercise last evening, 6 volunteers were handling the dogs they didn't own and I got to handle Diego, and he was sooooo easy, sooo well-behaved, never straining or pulling even once at the leash! The good thing is, Poppy got to socialize with a lot of other dogs and humans and came out of her shell completely. She graduated with special remarks from her instructor on how she was the most well-behaved labrado...

Yesterday was a fun evening... We first took Poppy and Preeti-Gautam's dog Moca to Lake Austin. Redbud Trl has an amazing dog park, leash-free zone and places for dogs to enter and swim in the water. Of course all the dogs go crazy there. Poppy tried her first swim and it was incredible! At first she hung out at the shallow edges of the water tentatively, watching Moca play and trying to frolic around the edges. Then VIkram slowly lured her in with a treat and before we knew it, she was doing a little lap in the water. After Moca left to play with some other dogs, though, she lost interest and started growling at something in the water. We got the dogs home and shampooed them clean. They promptly rolled themsleves over on the grass to dry and started playing with each other. AT first Moca had tried to assert himself over Poppy and we thought she was scared, but little did we know! She was licking his mouth and licking and licking till she had the big boy wrapped around her tiny paw...

Poppy is 5 months today! And as of last Saturday she weighed 39.5 pounds at the vet. Doing great I'll say! I hope she crosses the 60 mark with ease as a full-grown :) Pix of her....

It's been one whole week today since I loaded Poppy in my car and got her home. From the nervous, shy, calm puppy who would run away from strangers who visited her or new puppies that tried to smell her, she has suddenly come out of her shell and become this confident, happy, energetic pup. It's amazing! She's now a dog that walks upto people to smell them and play with them and that runs up to new dogs ( even the hyper ones) and keeps playing with them until they get tired of her and snarl! Haha! I am so proud of my little one! Though she does have some excellent traits like she doesn't bite or want to nibble at people, she doesn't jump or bark at visitors either... so for any dog-scared visitors, she's the perfect puppy to meet and make friends with! Puppies are so amusing too. She gets these amazing energy fits where she zooms round and round in circles at top speed on a path she has created for herself (around our sofas and coffee tables). The first time ...

Above, I'm hiding from Rahul and Surbhi... and Below I'm in deep thought

On her first night with us, she did bark (which delighted Vik because that's the first time he heard her bark) and then she whined in that pitiful doggy way for a while after we had crated her at night, but then she settled down. I couldn't sleep all night because Poppy was tossing and turning in her crate resulting in all sorts of sounds. Finally I went to her at 3 am and she woke up and started whining again (my mistake). Then Vikram and I slept outside in the living room for the rest of the night and she slept well too after that. Last night was really good because Ally and Nimish had come over and she was tired out with all the playing so she walked into her crate herself and fell deep asleep by 9 pm. Woke us up at 6:40 am with a tiny bark because she couldn't hold her bladder any more (we rushed her outside and sure enough she peed in the grass). But we had all slept over 8 hours and very well too, so it was a good night. The funniest though is how she sleeps - on her ...

As of today - Poppy is 32.5 pounds!!! And I thought she was 28 (yesterday) but I was wrong!! Wow, she was just 26 2 weeks ago! The vet gave her a clean bill but did say she was especially shy and needed to socialize. So she starts Puppy training from June 5th. It was very, err...different, riding with her loose in the backseat of a car today. I was with her the whole time and in the beginning she refused to come out once we reached Westgate Animal Hospital; she was shaking in my arms when I tried to lift her off the seat and onto the concrete. We eventually did manage it all, and she's learning to relax in the car slowly...

Poppy is a 4.5 months old pure-bred Labrador Retriever (yellow). Today was the day we got her home. While she was excellent and very patient on the drive from Pflugerville to South Austin, coaxing her out of the little travel crate from the back of my 2-door car into my arms so I could put her down on the floor was a scary 15-minutes. Vikram wasn't home yet and she refused to come out, which worried me... But I managed to coax her out with treats and grab her in my arms when she came out excitedly to munch the little treat. By then Vikram drove up too.. We put her first (Aggie) collar on her. Turns out it was too big but what the hell, I'll buy her a puppy one tomorrow. So we took her (on a leash) to sniff her new house and all its corners. She went upstairs excitedly but was rather scared while coming downstairs and refused to budge (from the top of the stairs). Again, it was time to heave and ho and carry 28-pound Poppy down the stairs. She excitedly walked into her new crate...