Poppy

So I was cozily sleeping in my crate on Sunday afternoon, when I suddenly heard Mommy shriek and scream in the bedroom. I opened an eye lazily (c'mon woman, let me sleep, will ya?) and slowly cocked my ears. The next thing I saw was Mommy rushing out with a suitcase in her hand and throwing it in the yard and calling someone frantically. I could sense her anxiety and slight fear. Why was she afraid of the suitcase? This was too interesting, so I finally raised my head and started looking at what was going on. Next thing I know she had grabbed Dad's heaviest shoes and a shovel and was beating the suitcase all over, thwack, thwack, thwack... (Nah, I was too lazy at that point too, to go and investigate). Finally I heard her mention some words like "scorpion... in my suitcase..." Oh yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawn. And I went back to sleep.

They say I am soft... with like really soft fur and so cuddly. I guess I have really good genes. I remember the world gushing over my mom Opal's fur. I must've got some of it. (Oooooh all this petting and loving and fussing over my soft fur and softer ears will go to my head! Now if only there were equivalent amounts of treats doled out to me for every kiss, pet and cuddle I get!) My humans use Johnson's baby shampoo on me... but I am pretty sure it's not that. I am just soft, and pretty, that way... We went swimming to Redbud yesterday, and we had an amazing time. In the end, after 45 minutes to an hour of swimming and running around the dog park I was E-X-H-A-U-S-T-E-D! Have been sleeping in for the past couple of days... sometimes I dream of big juicy treats and yelp, sometimes I dream of chasing other doggy friends and my legs start moving furiously even when I am sleeping. And then when I wake up, all the humans are usually laughing loudly at me or clicking...

It's a beautifully hot summer here in Texas. I love basking in the 2 pm sun for a good 15-20 minutes, getting all hot, and then cooling off on the tiles inside the house. Toula has been coming over to play a lot, and the humans have been taking me swimming (as you can see from my pretty pictures below). Talking of humans, they were eating some yummy food the other day. I just sat there and stared and stared hard. I had a feeeling if I stared long enough, I could psych the humans into some sort of guilty share-your-food-with-the-malnourished-pet feelings. (Not that I'm malnourished exactly... I am quite chunky and cuddly). The humans were making jokes like, "she thinks the food will walk off the plate and towards her automatically if she stares long and hard enough..." Well, what's so funny about that? Maybe it will! I also wagged my tail prettily for good measure, and it WORKED! At first mom made a big fuss about me having bad manners and staring at people when th...

Is going to be 3 years old in January, but still thinks she is a pup... She's 68 pounds now but her winter coat is in. Can't wait to weigh her in the summer, I am sure she will lose about 3 pounds then. And she is pretty territorial. She also tries to hump other meeker dogs in a display of dominance - but it's pretty embarassing to us. Our female dog humping others, ahem. We had a fun Christmas lunch at Preeti's with 3 other labs - Steele the black lab, Moca of course, and Ginger a chocolate lab. Poppy went absolutely crazy playing with them. That of course meant she would come home and crash for days, but hell no, the adrenaline hadn't subsided yet... because when we got back, Poppy got her 99c Walmart squeaky toy to us and wanted us to throw it for her... sigh. And then she crashed for two days straight. By the way, we had a secret Santa. Someone left a toy for Poppy outside our door for Christmas, with her name on it. I wonder which of our neighbors it might hav...

It's morning, I can hear the alarm go off and even though I am still sleepy, I think I'll go lick my parents' feet (if they are falling off the bed) and wake them up! That way I can eat! Wait mommy, no, you're awake but where are you going? Feed me ! So after 30 minutes of waiting, mom feeds me my yummy meal of frozen green beans, water and dog kibble... snort, gulp, beeeeeeeelch and the food is over, err, hehe...! Time to go stretch in the grass outside and pee a little. Dad usually takes his coffee mug and heads up to the study by this time, but he stops to open the upstairs balcony door on the way and let's me sit and stare at the world. Mom on the other hand is paranoid and thinks I'll jump out or something... hrrmph, as if!!! ( Wait, can I do that? It looks scary but maybe I can jump off the balcony when Ruthie is outside her house, so we can play...?) Anyway, it's fun and warm up on the balcony and i love it. I can usually see Ruthie and her pare...

I barely knew Toby. I do have a living, breathing, crapping, eating, loving, snuggly reminder of him though at my place. It's his spoiled and gorgeous daughter - my Poppy. So Toby is Poppy's birth lab dad. He was a pure-bred, handsome, yellow lab of 6 when we first met him. He was big, but not overwhelmingly so and extremely loving when he first saw us. He just flopped down beside us and rolled over in front of Rhonda, the breeder, for a belly rub - instantly takign Vikram's heart away. The next time we saw him was when we had gone to board Poppy at Rhonda's for July 4th weekend (in 2006). He was crated to minimize the mayhem of dogs greeting their long-lost kin. But Poppy ran towards his crate the minute she shook herself free of her over-enthusiastic mom and sisters, and tried licking him through the crate bars. They both whined to each other and wanted despreately to meet. It was such a warming sight. And that ended my acquaintance with the dog that fathered my pet. ...

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