whiskedaway

Lyndsay, I'm so sorry.

Week 27 Taken on the iPhone, so it's a bit static-y. Akira looking down on us all from her spot on the stairs.

Gorgeous pics! Looks like it was a fantastic day. :D

Akira currently likes sleeping behind the couch. I can't take a photo of her, because it's way too dark, and I don't want to encourage it! She gets herself stuck EVERY SINGLE TIME and OH and I have to shift the massively heavy couch.

I need Akira to stop getting behind the damn couch and getting stuck so that I have to move the massively heavy thing. I also need OH to get some common sense and quit footy so he stops getting hurt. Oh and money would be nice.

My Sibe is the same. She has a dog bed in her kennel, which she has torn to oblivion so that she's just sleeping on the wood of the kennel and a towel. More often than not, she's pulled her towel out of the kennel and is sleeping on the cement, or she's on the grass in the rain. Huskies like the cool, so a lot of them will sleep on the cement - a friend of ours said that his does the same thing. I wouldn't be too worried.

Akira has a stack of toys. The first thing we bought her was a kong when we first got her, which OH suggested because his old dog had one and she loved it. Since then, she has somehow ended up with three stuffed toys (only one has survived), three different pull toys, two balls, a coke bottle and a nylabone. I get her something new each week. It saves my furniture and keeps her occupied when I'm at work, though she has decided that destroying the mat is more fun than toys in the last week.

I saw the ad last night. Well done.

Beautiful pictures. Love the pic of the dogs in the car.

I got that for the first time yesterday. I was talking to someone about how Akira is about to start obedience training and they replied, "Why would you bother, Huskies are untrainable." Oh yes, because my PUP recalls about 60% of the time now, and your two-year-old Beagle can't even sit when you tell him to.

Good point. We had already decided that the Husky was the perfect dog for us (we'd been speaking to a couple of breeders in Adelaide, and we'd gotten a lot of information and we'd already been offered a pup from one breeder's coming litter) but Akira was advertised in the paper, we rang up and we picked her up. She was an accident, the owner had two Huskies and when he was overseas some idiot let the male dog in with the female while she was in heat. As a result, we paid a lot less for her (the owner only wanted to cover his vet and food bills because "backyard breeding is wrong" in his words) but we had no home checks or anything like that. I think that everyone has a really good point about education, though. Banning won't do anything, but making it more obvious will. The media needs to get on board, because most people will believe what the media tells them. And stations like Channel 10 with the Mal puppy on The Circle need to be shamed by the other stations if they won't correct what they've said. It's the only way people are going to learn - if it's drilled into them.

I agree with good socialisation. Akira got a fright at a dog park yesterday - a beagle tried to dominate her and because she wouldn't let him, he became aggressive - but because she's been well socialised, after 10 minutes of being my shadow and being wary, she was fine again to go and play with other dogs and so far I don't think there's any lasting effect (though we'll see when we meet another beagle I suppose!) The second most important thing is recall. At the moment we'd have 80% recall at home, though only about 40% at the dog park, though yesterday it was closer to 60%. We've been working fairly hard on it, and it's definitely stopped her from running out the garage onto the road at least once.

My cat had to be PTS at the end of 2008 and we had just moved house, so we took her to the nearest vet we could find, even though we'd never been there before. A few days later we got a personalised condolence card from the vet. We thought it was so nice of them, especially because we had never been there before.

I have muddy paw prints on my fence from when my neighbour popped his head over the fence to say hello to Akira after she'd been talking to him through the fence. ;)

Akira is a massive talker. She does the woo-woo's, she barks, she growls, and she does a funny half-growl half-howl thing. My neighbour has also heard her howl, but I've never caught her doing that - I think it's something she only does when she's upset.

I'm really happy Ching Ching's surgery went well. :p The photos are gorgeous, great shots.

I was very happy with Akira today. At the DOL meetup on Sunday, she was very naughty with the smaller puppies and did not play nicely at all. Today I took her to the dog park and she played very nicely with a beagle and a small cross of some kind. I kept her on the lead for the first part of the time at the dog park, though, because there was a fairly aggressive spitz cross of some sort that was growling at her. And now she's lying down cleaning mud off of herself. Good puppy. :p

Akira gets called a mongrel when she's naughty too. OH's dad started it (he only ever calls her "Mongrel", it's her nickname from him) and whenever she's naughty now she gets "Where's that mongrel dog?"

There was heaps of food. I've still got half a bowl of coleslaw, which I will have to eat all by myself because OH doesn't like salad and Akira probably would love it but isn't allowed to have it because of the fact it contains onion.

I think I'll always have a Spitz breed. Getting a Husky was originally OH's choice, because he'd always wanted one since he was a kid, but since getting Akira I've decided that I just love the Spitz temperament. I've always liked Samoyeds as well (a friend of ours had one named Ruski when I was a kid) and after meeting Ella today, I'm certain that OH and I will one day consider getting a Lappie.

I missed it as well at first. It kind of looked like Lyndsay's Holly, even though she wasn't there today.

Yep, it's Esky. Great photos, it was a lovely day.

Week 26 I took this photo this morning, shocked at how much she's grown! She almost looks like a real Husky now (or so a friend tells me).

Exactly. I think almost everyone is the same with a new puppy, but it definitely does get better. My partner reckons that puppies are worse than kids (not that we have kids to know! ) because you're sleep deprived with both of them, but a baby can't destroy the furniture like a puppy can. Our little girl is just over 4 months old (19 weeks on Sunday) and she sleeps through the night (outside in a kennel, because she likes the cool) and is completely house trained. We haven't had an accident in four weeks now. So it definitely gets better.

I can't use the water thing either for the same reason. I ignored her if she bit me when we first got her, and she stopped. As she started teething a few weeks back, she went back to biting me again, but that's pretty much stopped now too. However, she's never stopped biting OH because he lets her do it and continues the game. He doesn't get it that he's teaching her bad habits.