Puppy Watch

Ok, so the little porker has just about doubled her body weight since we got her.  She's a whopping 12.6 pounds, according to the Wii Fit. She is expected to top out at somewhere in the vicinity of 75 pounds.  For the record, that will be bigger than Rowan.  He's 62 pounds.  It's the Lab in her.  She will be a horse.  Right now, she's just a pony.  A growing pony.

She has discovered that she can hold her own against the boys and spends a great deal of her waking time to harassing them. Said harassment consists of lots of jumping, bouncing, snapping and chewing. The boys, for their part, are over their initial shyness about playing with her since she's grown and now routinely run her over in the yard.  After which she bounces back up and keeps chasing them.

She is big enough that we've taken to letting her sleep with the boys at night which has almost eliminated the 2 AM whining.  She still gets up way too damn early but at least she's sleeping through the night.

Rowan, especially, gets the focus of her attention as chew toy. Perhaps because Myrddin, when he deigns to play with her at all, tends to lay on her or hold her down with his paws.  She will only tolerate a few moments of that before she squirms out from underneath.

She has discovered  that she can get on our bed, that the front door opens onto a whole different yard and that soda cans make lovely noise makers.  She has not however, discovered that the yard is the only appropriate place to eliminate and we're fast running out of "wee wee" pads.  If she could just consistently hit the damn things it wouldn't be quite so bad but sometimes she thinks getting her feet on the pad is enough even though the business end is hanging off.

She is still maddeningly adorable. And starting to come to her name.  So in all, she's doing about as well as an almost 3 month old can be expected.

It's been startlingly like have a newborn in the house, complete with 2AM crying, lots of "diaper" changes and smelly food.  Perhaps not so bad of an experience for the 19-year-old but one that I could have done without.

She also shows quite a few traits in common with Rowan, due in part, we think, of their shared Rhodesian Ridgeback heritage.  She has answered one question that has plagued us since we got him.  We now know how he makes such an ungodly mess drinking water.  Apparently, water gets "caught" in the jowls and drips out.  We know this because we see it happen just about every time Aibhne gets a drink.  She sticks her snout in the water, laps it up and when she picks up her head, water can clearly be seen running out from under her jowls.  God help us when she gets bigger if its so obvious now.

So, clearly I could talk about the puppy all night but I will spare you the rest of the boring details.  Suffice it to say that even Hubby, who growled a bit when we got her, thinks she's pretty damn adorable.

Clearly, it's a survival mechanism.