"Going To The Dogs"

It seems that things around here have just gone to the dogs.  Anyone reading my blog over the past month will probably get that impression.  I do apologize for showing puppy pictures so often, but I couldn't resist showing you this last group of pics.  We'll be traveling for about two hours on Saturday to pick up our new little canine friend, and I guess that's the last time he'll get to be with his litter mates.  I hope he won't miss them too much.

The breeder sent these pictures on Monday.  She took the pups outside for the first time on Sunday, and she said they had such a blast.  They played with pine cones and learned to go up and down steps.  She wrote that true to life, the girls managed to do everything first, while the boys were busy exploring their new world.  :)

...picking up pine cones.

Life is going to be really different around here for awhile.  There's a big difference between a new eight-week old puppy and an established, house-trained, senior dog.  The mister and I got our first Scottie in our second year of marriage.  When we went to pick her out, she was just five or six weeks old, and she was there with her mother and all her litter mates.  They were in a big pile, and we always talk about how Bonnie just climbed over that pile of wiggly, squirming puppies to get to us.  That settled it; she was the one we wanted since she had actually "chosen" us.

She was a sweetheart, but strong-willed, as terriers are known to be.  And you don't want to know how she almost chewed our house down to the foundations when she was still a puppy.  Our house at the time had a heated and cooled sun porch that we used as a den, and that's where she stayed at night.  We had a papasan chair and a little wicker loveseat in there that we purchased at Pier One or World Bazaar (can't remember which).  They were our first two pieces of new furniture that we had purchased together; most of our furniture was donated from our parents.

This was our little house, and you can see the sun porch on the front.

Anyhoo, we didn't start Bonnie off sleeping in her crate at night, which was a big mistake.  We were newbies and didn't know any better.  One night, my husband unknowingly left a blue ink pen on the table next to the chair.  In the morning, we got up to find a half-chewed ink pen on the cushion of the new papasan chair, along with a big blue ink spot.  She had also chewed on the frame of the chair.  In addition, she chewed a big corner off the wicker love seat (not in the same night of course).  There are only so many hours in one day, after all. 

Do you know what's inside a golf ball?  We do.  One evening, we went out to dinner before our son was born.  We thought we would leave Bonnie closed up on the sun porch while we were gone.  What could go wrong?  When we returned we discovered that the door from the porch to the living room didn't close securely like we thought, and while we were gone, Miss Curiosity discovered she could push the connecting door open, and decided to explore the rest of the house.  When we returned home, she was glad to see us, as always, and we were puzzled to see a whole bunch of little things that looked sort of like rubber bands all over the floor along with the outside "shell" of a golf ball lying nearby.  What?!!  Golf balls are really hard and we could not believe she had managed to chew one up.  Thankfully, she didn't choke to death on the little "rubber bands" that made up the inner ball of the golf ball.

She also gave the molding around our door frames quite a workout, too.  Our house was a 1924 bungalow, and it had the wide, pretty molding around door frames and windows that we would love to have in our house today.  And I almost forgot the best part.  When we purchased that house, the previous owners had covered the floor of the sun porch with this ugly serviceable, green, wall-to-wall, indoor/outdoor carpet.  We weren't crazy about the carpet, but we didn't know what kind of flooring was underneath it.  We were both working full-time and hadn't planned on pulling up or replacing the carpet right away.

Well, Miss Bonnie had fashion sense, and she didn't care for that carpet.  While we were at work, she found a loose thread somewhere and started pulling and chewing.  She was a hard little worker, and she spent the whole day working on that carpet.  When we got home, about half the carpet in the room had been "taken up" for us.  Part of the carpet was intact, and part was reduced to a bunch of raveled, chewed up thread.  Yikes.

Later, when we could see the humor in the situation, we used to joke that Bonnie did us a favor.  She gave us a big head start on getting rid of that ugly carpet.  And underneath, we found an old-fashioned black tile floor; after we cleaned and stripped it, the tile looked much better than that cheap carpet.

Sorry for the poor quality of this photo -- it's about 21 years old.  This is the connecting French door that we discovered popped open all too easily.  :)  You can sort of see the black floor on the sun porch in this picture.  The wicker loveseat and the papasan chair were no longer in the room at this point; they had been replaced by a nicer sofa and chair.

Boy, are things going to be hopping around here.  We're going to have a puppy to train, and I'm sure there's a Scottie puppy out there who's thinking he's got a couple of humans to train.   ;)

They look so angelic, don't they?  Um-hum.

Thanks for following along with me on my daily journey here at House at Forest Manor.  I do enjoy your visits and hope you'll come back often.


Denise