Poppy

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 ...