Tag Archives: chance

Kaylee’s home

Posted on by

Kaylee’s flight went very well and we were all home together by 11:00, which is pretty good time considering the traffic.

She and Chance are rapidly working out their differences. He’s easily the more dominant at the moment, being twice Kaylee’s size, but she doesn’t take a significant amount of crap from him either, so we’ll see who stays on top.

Chance is the one having a rough day. First Kaylee came home and invaded his turf, then he threw up on the lawn a few times. Then we tried to introduce him to one of the yorkies that our neighbor owns and Puddin bit Chance almost as soon as they went nose to nose.

Chance is fine physically. Emotionally I think he’s exhausted. Right now I have him draped across my lap and Kaylee sleeping on the arm of the sofa a few inches away.

I’ll post some better pics of the pack later, but right now I think I’ll just stay here and be mom.

Home sweet mess

Posted on by

We drove home from Virginia Beach yesterday, in fairly good weather and making fairly good time. When we finally reached the house, we found Houdini-Dog still in the kitchen where he belongs, for a change.

That was the good news. The bad news was that the only reason Chance was still in the kitchen was because the bathroom door had blocked his ability to pop the gate all the way out. So instead, he shredded the corner of the carpet he could now reach. Whee. Nothing like a 6 hour drive to come home to a pile of shredded carpet, carpet padding, dog toys, and poop.

So my first hour home consisted of mopping the floor. Joy.

Anyway, it didn’t take us long to get settled in — the house was mostly clean before we left and my sister left the place in pristine condition for us when we arrived home (sans Houdini’s attempts to escape via carpet burrowing, which she clearly couldn’t have predicted. Hell, she even unloaded the dishwasher for me.) so we mostly just need to catch up on laundry and the mail.

Sounds so simple when I say it that way, doesn’t it? How come it alway takes so much longer?

The other thing I need to do is transfer files off the laptop and onto the desktop so I can finish Tuesday’s comic, start Saturday’s, and generally get off my ass in getting my online life back in order. WordPress needs an upgrade, the Mac has a security patch to install, the laptop’s optical drive is dead, etc. etc. it never ends.

In an attempt to get off my ass a little faster, I threw out two thirds of the RSS feeds and comics I read just so they wouldn’t pose a distraction. I’ll probably throw out more as the next week or so goes. How well that will actually motivate me, I can’t say. But here’s for more blog and less late comics.

Chance update & some quick pics

Posted on by

These photos look like crap because my original revision iPhone has a lot of trouble capturing these new high-energy puppies they’re producing these days.

The top left and the bottom are taken at 9pm a few days ago after a looong walk around our complex. The top right was taken this afternoon after romping with my sister a while.

won't eat a french fry, but he'll eat a stick. napping in front of the window.
long walk flop in the grass time.

Some highlights:

  • He is terrified of french fries, but will eat leaves, sticks, and bugs. Nature boy!
  • We’ve spent a lot of time this week barking at the dog that lives in the shiny black dishwasher, and occasionally at the dog that lives in the stove. Dishwasher Dog even gets scratched at, and one day I caught Chance trying to peer around the edge of the door to see Dishwasher Dog better.
  • The bad news is that he’s escaped from the kitchen twice this week. The good news is that when he has the run of the house, he’s making a good effort at returning to the kitchen (where the pee pads and litter box are) when he needs to go.
  • My nose didn’t get bit once this week, which is definitely an improvement.
  • We’re making good progress on “sit” and “come here” and “come on” (or as everyone else knows them, sit, come, and heel”), and he’s starting to get an inking of what “wait” (everyone else’s “stay”) means. And he definitely understands that “Hey!” is “stop what you’re doing and pay attention to Mom”.

I’m thinking of doing puppy updates every Thursday, so that a) I have a chance to get a few decent pictures throughout the week, b) you have something visual to look forward to and c) I can track his age (since he was born on a Thursday). No guarantees yet, especially considering how busy this week is supposed to be, but that’s the plan.

And yes, at some point, I’ll learn how to embed this crap correctly here instead.

Puppy Adventures: Rearranging the Kitchen

Posted on by

So Chance has been here about a week and a half, and he’s having a pretty good time I think. He’s not overly fond of being left home along, when he’s awake, but since he sleeps most of the day anyway we’ve got a pretty good truce going. (Friday he discovered an escape route under one of the baby gates, so it’s a tentative truce.)

One of the funnier things he does when he’s tired or stressed is pile all his toys in his bed. He was in a litter of two, but in a household with at least four adult dogs and three puppies from another litter, so I suspect this is an attempt to define his own space. It’s a totally understandable reaction, but hilarious to walk into the kitchen and find a perfectly clear floor, and a tiny tiny dog bed stuffed to the gills with eight toys and every puppy treat he’s been given that day. Usually he’s laying somewhere on top, fast asleep.

And we’re already seeing signs that we’ve got a smart one on our hands. He was upset that he couldn’t leave the kitchen the other day when we were home (he needed to pee and we needed a break) and he got tired of standing on the hard linoleum in front of the gate. He dragged his bed over to the gate and climbed in, then watched us through the gate with an expression very much like we were using to watch TV.

Two things that set Chance apart from JessieDog (because we can’t help but occasionally make comparisons between our “kids”): Jessie wouldn’t play fetch on a bet, but Chance loves it. Also, Jessie loved to be covered with the blankets but couldn’t figure out how to do it herself. Chance has already mastered both covering and uncovering himself, and was doing a good job of drying himself off after a shower this morning just by burrowing through the towel.

Things I’m not allowed to do without a small furry escort

Posted on by

The night routine is like this:

Chance falls asleep between 9 and 11 depending on how much time he got alone and whether he found something nice to chew himself to sleep on.

We go to bed sometime between 11 and 1ish. (It’s a weekend and vacation.)

He’s tired when we go upstairs (I carry him) and immediately jumps into his bed….
…until I start to change. Then he has to follow me to the hamper, then back to bed…
…until I go to the bathroom. The he has to follow me in there, tilts his head a lot at all the running water, gets bored when I brush my teeth, and goes back to bed…
…until I need to grab something from the closet. Then he has to follow me in there to see the dog in the wall mirror. Then it’s back to bed…
…until I get in bed and shut out the light. Then he has to explore the room for a minute until I yell at him to go back to bed. He chews on the blanket and the stuffy….
…until he falls asleep. Then it’s quiet and peaceful and everyone’s happy.

That is, until he has to pee, at 5am.

Chance is home.

Posted on by

He’s somehow tinier than I expected – might be because his mom Josie is actually smaller than JessieDog was. So very perfect though. He got carsick on the ride from Virginia to Delaware and I think that’s probably why he has mostly slept since coming home. Only really whined twice and both times Nighthawk and I had simultaneously disappeared from view.

I’m already very happy. So is Nighthawk. We think Chance is too. This should be the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

***
just to prove that it can’t come up roses all the time, our camera broke this evening. Puppy pics will be coming but not tonight.