Michael & Liz are Bloggable

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.