Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Being a small dog, Daisy has trouble getting on the couch, but we're doing our best to help her out. Tonight while Liz was making dinner, I built a ramp in the garage out of a piece of wood we bought and the rest out of the loft that I owned in college. That loft is coming in pretty handy. She usually just puts her feet up on us and we lift her up. Well we decided to make it easier for her with the ramp and we will no longer be picking her up and no longer be letting her jump off. It just looks like it's hard on her legs and body so we'll encourage the ramp as opposed to jumping. Check out this video of her accomplishments:



Last weekend we had a party for her so she could meet all of our friends and also so she could make new friends. We invited a bunch of dogs over and Dewey came of course, and also our friends dog named Pepper came as well. Dewey is big boy and Pepper is hyper so Daisy was definitely intimidated but after a while they all got along great. Here are a few pictures:

We also have a few more pictures in our web album. The link is on the right under "Clickability". Do it.

Future videos will consist of her burying things in the corner and also her going crazy whenever we sing. The other day I started singing randomly and she was practically sleeping on the couch and all of a sudden jumped up wagging her tail like I was singing to her or about her. So I kept singing and she attacked my face with kisses. So last night Liz and I were talking and I go "OH!! Check this out" and started singing and Daisy again went nuts... So you'll have to see what we mean with a video at some point.

That's all for now... folks!

ps - it says posted by Liz, but blogspot is a filthy liar.

OK OK OK, We know we know. We should have blogged long ago, when we first got the pup pup. But we're lazy and enjoying her far too much. So as you can see from the title of the blog, we decided to keep her name Daisy. But we like to come up with cool ways of saying it, like Daisers. We will probably post a lot more pictures soon to show off her cuteness but we only have a couple good ones for now.

This little doggy is just the sweetest thing. She loves to play with her stuffed animals and her favorite game is to bring us one of them and try to wrestle it from us. She's so nice about it too because she'll be holding on and growl and snarl like she's trying really hard, but then if we lean down and try and give her kisses, she pauses her snarling and just holds very very still as if to say "I'm not falling for that". And if we start to wrestle again she starts back up with the tough talk. She even holds on tight enough so that if we hold the animal high enough, her feet will leave the ground and she'll just hang there by her teeth. But she loves to run around and throwing her toys.

She would also make really good friends with squirrels because for some reason she has a habit of "saving" her food. Whenever we give her a treat or a bone or anything awesome, she takes it and maybe nibbles it a bit, but then she'll run around the house trying to find anywhere to hide it. So when she finds a spot, she'll scratch and paw like she's digging, but really doing nothing at all, and then she'll put the item down, poke it with her nose to push it into place, then she'll take her snout and shove imaginary dirt into place. We'll be walking around the house and just laugh at all the things she's "hidden". We find half eaten rawhides on the stairs. The other day I put my shirt on the couch so she folded my shirt around a treat I gave her. And just yesterday Liz was sitting on the ground and Daisy tried to hide a bone under her leg. Liz said "well that isnt going to work at all!" and the second she stood up it was right in the middle of the floor.

She loves to give kisses. If you sit on the ground, eventually she'll very slow and timidly climb your legs and up your belly and raise her head up and start licking your face. She's cute about it too, it's not like we dont see it coming. We know exactly what she's gonna do but she goes slow and is very careful about letting us know she's gonna do it.

One thing she does that we don't like is when she gets too playful and doesn't have anything in her mouth, she tries to bite at us... we were lying on the ground the other day and Daisy bit Liz's nose. We think it's cuz she is only 4 months old and she's teething so she really is biting on things to test her teeth out. It's totally not a vicious bite but more of a misdirected playful act. She also likes to bite pant legs and we're trying to break her of that as well. I don't think it'll take very long because she's already recognizing our command: "NO BITE!".

Speaking of commands, we're still working on "Sit" and "Stay" and also are taking a page from Jon and Julies book by doing that before she eats. We'll say sit and stay so she doesn't attack the food bowl before we put it down, but then when we say "OK" and she just looks at us thinking that she still has to wait... so maybe we need to work more on the "OK" command, to teach her she's free to do as she pleases. The problem with the training is that Daisy really loves the sitting position... so when training her we have to catch her off guard with the "sit" command otherwise, she's always sitting anyway. I'd pull out a treat and she'd run up and plop, sit on the ground... so maybe she doesn't need any training? The other problem is that she doesn't really value food like most dogs... If she hasn't eaten in a while, she'll be excited about her newly filled bowl, but if we get her a treat, she takes it and hides it away. The funny part is when she randomly comes running into the room because she retrieved a hidden treat from earlier in the day. She'll run in and throw it in the air and then pounce on it, and pick it up and throw it again in the air and pounce again... and Liz and I look at each other, like "where did she get that??". She's very smart in that way.

The one thing I love to do (because I did this to Lucy when I was little) is anytime you want tons of kisses, you lie on the ground like your hurt and you whine like a dog, really loud and squeaky. Anytime I do that with Daisy she sprints over to me with tons of kisses. She'll then get really low and push herself as hard as she can to get under me all the while still kissing. It's too cute.

As far as potty training goes, she started out having a lot of trouble, we realized this is mainly because we don't pay attention to her signs. Anytime she is just walking around and whining, that's why, it has absolutely nothing to do food... before we would say "What do you want Daisy?" and just question her needs, that was dumb. We also let her run loose around the house, big mistake. We have now got a baby gate and keep her in our sights at all times. She used to go to a secluded area of the house and poop there but now that she has nowhere to go, she is a lot better at telling us to go out and she hasn't pooped anywhere but outside since then. Even her accidents don't really bother us though because her bladder is the size of a mini-squirt gun... anytime she goes it only takes one paper towel to clean it up. And the best part is that, if she does have an accident, she knows it. She'll look very depressed and sometimes will go and sit in the corner as if to say, I know that was wrong but I can't help it. Liz and I have been great in the respect of scolding though, they say never scold a dog because it doesn't know what you're scolding for, and so far the only time we've scolded her is with a "NO BITE" if she bites our hands too hard and she knows immediately that she did wrong, so that's good.

I hate to end the blog on a negative note because we love her to pieces and feel so lucky that we got her seeing as so many people applied. We can't wait to take her to see our family and go on trips with her, she's just so much fun.

Anyway, I gotta get goin but we promise to post more info and pictures. We're just loving her so much and couldn't be happier.

Here's the picture of our family:


This, by the way, is Daisy's best friend Cousin Dewey. They got to play at the dog park together. Daisy was a little shy at first but after a while she warmed up and before you know it they were wrestling around. Daisy's gotta watch out for Dewey, he's sneaky with the steamroller.

The countdown is now on... we got a call from Mickey, who has been our contact person at the Carolina Animal Protection Society, and she told us we will have our home visit on Wednesday afternoon. Which means after that, she will have her appointment to get spayed on Thursday and we will pick her up on Saturday!! We have already been reading a doggy training book and have bought all her toys and crate and doggy beds and everything. It will be a really long week but the next blog you see will be about us bringing her home to our house! Until then we will just be admiring her pictures and thinking of a new name for her. Feel free to send suggestions... she's small but thinks she's a big, tough daredevil and is also very adventurous. These are our favorite pictures:

So yesterday we went to see Daisy. We couldn't possibly want her any more (that's two words, not one =P ), so we are hoping that the process of adopting her isn't stopped by something stupid at this point. After this visit the only 2 things that need to happen before we can adopt her is a home visit to see our house by someone in their organization and then she is getting spayed on September 6th. We hope to have the visit done this week and then we'll go pick her up next weekend.

But she is just as small as advertised. She is just about 4 pounds and they don't think she will get very much bigger so it'll be like we have a puppy forever. When we walked in she came right up to us tail wagging and was very playful. She immediately gave us tiny kisses and was very into playing. She had this little pink stuffed animal she loved to wrestle around with and it was funny to watch her struggle to get any grip on the hardwood floors of the house. As you can see from the pictures below, she looks like a 4 lb. version of a golden retriever, she must have gotten the looks of one breed but the size of a chihuahua. She doesn't shed at all but we are told that her "baby coat" will be shed and once she gets her adult hairs she wont shed much after that. Either way it won't bother us because she is so small and any shedding she does won't be seen because it's so light colored. She was definitely all about being held and carried around. She seemed so content. And when we were sitting on the couch she enjoyed sitting there on our laps with us. After a while she became fidgety but that's expected with all the excitement. I think we got the biggest kick out of her tackling normal dog tasks but because of her size she struggles. Like getting up on her padded bed, she had to hop and bounce in order to get into it. When she jumped off the couch she was as clumsy as possible, just 4 paws out like she was trying to fly and then she would just bounce right onto the ground.

Being just under 6 months old, she doesnt listen very well. We will be uploading videos soon and it's obvious in the videos that when we say her name over and over and she just looks at us. We'll have to work on that. She does seem potty-trained which is nice but I think the crate we get her will help as well.

Well here are all the pictures of her that we took while we were there: