Michael & Liz are Bloggable

Marathon:

So I wanted to update everyone on how my marathon went this past weekend. I don't know if everyone knew, but I ran the City of Oaks Marathon here in Raleigh this past Sunday. I ran it with one of my groomsmen named John. We had been training all year although within the last few months we've somewhat fallen off. I can honestly say that I didn't prepare for this one as well as I did for my first one back in 2005 but going into it, I still felt like I could do it. This race however was much more difficult than my first one. It was much more hilly and part of the race was on a gravel/dirt trail so that made it tough as well. For anyone interested in seeing the course, here it is:

http://cityofoaksmarathon.com/course_info/

We started off rocky. John has had knee problems in the last few months and within the first .5 mile he said it started to hurt. Although as we went on, it didn't get worse so he continued. We made it through the first half in 2:08 which is a great pace and exactly where we wanted to be. Around mile 15 we started to alternate between walking and running. And somewhere between there and the finish line my left foot started hurting. It's known as plantar fasciitis. It's basically pain in the ligament or tendon that connects to your heel from the balls of your feet. We finally hobbled in, finishing the race in 4 hours and 47 minutes (27 minutes slower than my first marathon).

Now 3 days later the pain in my foot is still there but it's healing up. The marathon is a funny race. I realize this is going to sound ridiculous because not everyone can run 26, 13 or even 3 miles, so stick with me when I say this. The first 13 miles feel fantastic... I don't feel tired and I don't feel winded. If I stopped, my muscles would be sore but it wouldn't be a big deal. But that second half is when the muscle pain really comes. It's a feeling you just won't forget. It's a feeling you never want but you have to have in order to finish such a grueling race. I can't imagine ever being in good enough shape to ever not feel tired during the second half of the race. Although I trained really hard for my first race, around mile 20 I completely hit the wall. My muscles would not function and running was an impossibility. This race however I never hit "the wall" however my muscles still were in pain but not enough that I couldn't easily keep going. So it's interesting to me that even though I didn't train as hard, I never hit the wall. So will I do another one? Probably but whether that's sooner or later, I don't know. It's such a commitment to train for that I don't know if that's something I want to put myself through again anytime soon.

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Dog Experiment:

So there are a few behaviors in our family that have become readily apparent to me in the past few days and I am on a mission to fix them, or at least run an experiment for one full week to see if I can fix them. These few things are as follows:

• I do not like getting out of bed in the morning.
• Liz does not like getting out of bed in the morning.
• Daisy loves getting out of her crate in the morning.
• Because of our work schedules, Daisy only spends an hour or two between getting up and getting in her crate for the day, so she's understandably wound up when we get home.
  
• Daisy is not great on walks. She smells things too much, will not keep walking when I tug on her, and she also likes to run ahead, pulling on the leash.
• I do not eat any breakfast in the morning.
  

So because of these things I have decided to run an experiment with Daisy. Here it is, and probably far too structured for a blog:

Purpose:
To change my view of getting up in the morning from being tired to being awake and ready for the day. This is also to see how Daisy's behavior changes not only towards me as her Dad but also towards Liz and the day in general as she gets a little more exercise in the morning. It is also to change her behavior on our walks. See procedure below.

Hypothesis:
Daisy will not be as wild and wound up when we get home from work. She will also become very pleasant to go for a walk with. I will have a reason for getting up in the morning and getting a small breakfast and it will not be as hard to start the day. Liz will be happier to not have to get out of bed on the mornings she usually takes Daisy out.

Materials:
Ms. Daisington and her leash as well as very warm cloths.

Procedure:
Every morning at 6:30AM I will get up and take Daisy downstairs. I will get a glass of water and a snack before doing anything. I will then take Daisy out on a leash and walk at least the small loop around our neighborhood with her. Whenever she starts to sniff or smell I'll try using our "Daisy come" command and when she does, I'll praise her. Whenever she runs out ahead I will stop in my tracks and will not keep going until she sits, stays and stops tugging. When we get back, I will not get back in bed.

So that is the extent of my experiment. In exactly one week, that being next Wednesday night, I will let everyone know how this experiment goes. I will include the Results, Conclusions and Acknowledgments.

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By the way, during this post, Daisy wanted to help, so she laid her head on my laptop. Check it out(too cute, Liz came over and said, "I had to take a picture"):

So it has been about two months now since we got Daisy and while she has always been kind and nice to us, lately we feel like she is finally loving on us as if we have always been her owners, and as if she always wants us to be.

Today I went to see the Bengals game at a local bar and when I came home Liz was napping on the couch and Daisy met me at the door. I picked Daisy up and sat on the couch and she immediately went into hibernate mode and just closed her eyes and went limp on my chest with the occasional kiss here and there. After about 10 minutes I put her on the ground and opened the sliding glass door to let her out. She ran out and then turned to see if I would follow. I closed the door to stay inside and she ran up to it and starting scratching. I opened it up and she just stood in the doorway waiting for me(see Exhibit A above). I made my way out and she wagged her tail and led me down the stairs into the yard. We played fetch for a bit and when I got bored and went inside she came right in after me. I sat on the couch to check some fantasy football scores and Daisy climbed up to the couch and slowly walked over to Liz, walked all the way up her legs and plopped right on Liz's stomach into a ball to go back to sleep(see Exhibit B, Daisy tried to get up when I got the camera, so she was no longer in "ball" form). This of course woke up Liz but it's without a doubt the greatest way to wake up, let me tell you. And while this is not the first time this has happened, it has been much more frequent and we feel like she is finally 100% comfortable with us.

I must say there are times when this love waivers, and that is any time we put her in the car to go anywhere. Up until 2 months ago, car=bad. It was either to go to the Vet to get spayed or even worse, to be taken to a new home and will not come back to where ever she was. But we are beginning to change that because everyone at the Vet loves her, and by loves her I mean I'm lucky to walk out of there with her in my arms, and any other car ride is to fun places where she can run around. We think she is beginning to know what the words "go to the vet" or "going to see cousin Dewey" mean.

It has just been nice to see her transform the way she has and I'm sure she will continue to do so. After all the reading I have done about dogs and dog training, people always say that a dog won't obey you and won't want to do tricks for you unless it loves, respects, and trusts you. So now with that being said, it seems like lately she has been a lot more well behaved. Whenever we say "no bite" she actually stops, she hasn't gone to the bathroom in the house in at least a month, and she has very quickly picked up on the tricks we are trying to teach her. She has mastered, "sit", "stay", "come", "no bite", and "go to the ramp". And now we are working on "shake", "stand up", and "lay down". She will willingly do these tricks but we have to show her. We'll see how long it takes her to do them herself. Luckily for us, dog training has been a ton of fun so I see no reason why she can't learn English by at least next September.

Tonight she has another full night of fun. We are going over to Jon, Julie, and Cousin Dewey's house for dinner, pumpkin carving, and some scary movie fun. Probably going to watch "The Thing" and another scary movie like "The Shining" or something. She'll of course be preoccupied by the Deweymeister.

Here is one more picture of Daisy sleeping on us:
I also want to include one more thing. Liz came home a few days ago with a surprise. The back story is that on our honeymoon the cruise ship sailed by the Na Pali Coast on the western side of Kauai. When we were sailing by I took the camera and took as many high resolution pictures as I could and there was one clear and overwhelming favorite of the bunch. For a long time I had it as my background on my computer and just love it. Well Liz took that picture, and with the help of Stacy, they got it blown up and framed and Liz brought it home the other day. It is absolutely amazing and is a perfect picture to put above the mantle. I really love having meaningful things hung up around the house rather than just a generic picture we buy at the store, so that picture will be a reminder of the awesome time we had on the trip to Hawaii. Here are 2 pictures of the picture:


PS - I love the Bengals, but they depress me. Fire Bresnahan and draft 7 players for the defense.

After coming home from the hardest day of work I have had since working at IBM, I must blog about how awesome life is. I realize that this blog is about Liz and my lives and what we do and where we go, but I want to take a second to say just how awesome life is when you have a wife like Liz. I realize we only have 4 months experience in the marriage department, but I feel like our lives flow like peanut butter and jelly. Whenever she falls off the side of the sandwich, as that tends to happen in PB&J's, I flow right off the side with her. And the bite of a PB&J isn't as delicious without a little bit of peanut butter and a little bit of jelly. Metaphors and jokes aside, we just don't have arguments, I feel like we communicate a lot about life and the daily events, and we always know how the other will react in most situations which makes it very easy to live with each other. I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that this paragraph is just about as long as a reader wants it to be so I will leave it at, life is great with Liz.

So as far as the events in the past month or so. Momma D came to visit and that was a lot of fun. She came with her sleeves rolled up and boy did she change this house around. She painted one of our guest bedrooms royal blue, our master bathroom a dark cappuccino color, and kick started my deck project. She also got to meet Daisy for the first time and I know that they both loved that. We are so appreciative of her visiting and helping us out around the house. We look forward to more of that in the future :).
The weekend after Momma D was here, we went to the beach with Jon and Julie and Cousin Dewey. It was a great time and we will remember it most by our lack of preparation. Liz and I didn't even pack enough for a night of sleeping on the couch, let alone camping near the beach. A full change of clothes, a bathing suit, sandals, flashlight, matches or fire starters; these are all items that make sense at a camp site near the beach, apparently not to us. But regardless we had a fantastic time. We'd like to do again sometime soon and possibly make it a tradition. Here are a few pictures from the trip(you might have to click on them to see them better):

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: