We had a big improvement with Bailey this week. She can be a pain sometimes, but she’s such a joy to be around. I really love coming home to her. Sometimes I’ll have a bad day at work or I’m just in a “blah” sort of mood. Josh has those days as well. Of course we lift each other up and it’s great to see each other, but no matter what kind of day we’ve had or what kind of mood we’re in…Bailey is ALWAYS super excited to see us when we get home. Used to, one of us would walk her when we got home in the afternoons (usually Josh), and the other would wash lunch dishes or do whatever needed to be done. I realized it only takes a few minutes for us to walk her together, so now we do. J It’s really enjoyable to walk her together and start to unwind from a long day at work.
Training
Bailey’s STAR Puppy Certificate and medal came in!
We’re starting to work on a new trick now. We’ve decided to teach Bailey to wave. After some research, we realized we should probably teach her to shake first. This is one of those tricks I didn’t really care for. I’ve never been horribly impressed by it. I suppose it’s cute though, and it’s actually the first step to a few tricks we want to teach her. It was very easy to teach her this one. She likes to use her paws a lot and we’ve actually been trying to discourage it. She’ll try to knock treats and toys out of your hands if she’s very excited. She doesn’t mean to hurt you, but she has large paws with large claws…so it sometimes does. I hope teaching her how to shake doesn’t reverse any progress we’ve had in that area. Anyway…she picked this up almost immediately. She sometimes doesn’t recognize the voice command still, but as soon as you hold your hand out, she knows what you want. When she’s very excited she sometimes nibbles at her foot or your hand, but we’re working on that. J She’s getting bored with this already, but I don’t want to try to teach her to wave until she knows the verbal command well.
Play Time
We’ve started hiding Bailey’s toys when we play with her. It’s something we can do when we’re doing little chores or getting ready in the mornings and she really seems to enjoy it. We pretty much have 1 toy that we do this with. It’s actually part of another toy that has been thrown away. It’s a rubber piece that used to be around the rope. The rope was very worn and Bailey was able to pull the strings out really easily. I didn’t want any blockages because of her eating a ton of string, so we cut the rope and took the rubber piece off. Now, it’s pretty much a rubber tube and it makes a great toy for teething. For hiding, I’ll make her sit and stay, then go in another room and hide it. I’ll tell her to “come find it” and she’ll get so excited. I still have to make it pretty easy. If she doesn’t find it soon, she’ll give up. I started by just putting it behind my back. At first, I didn’t think she understood what I wanted her to do. I hid it behind her toy box. She sniffed and dug through her toy box looking for it. I expected her to just pick up another toy and bring it to me to throw for her, but she kept looking until she found the tube! She’s so smart!
She put her squeaky bone in her water bowl the other day. She's so silly :-)
Potty Training
Nothing to report :-) YAY!
Bailey’s Victims
Just one…a flip flop. It was a flip flop I liked very much…probably my favorite black pair, and I still have no clue where she got it from, but it was a cheap flip flop. I don’t get super upset when Bailey chews stuff. Of course I’m not happy about it, but she’s been SO much better than Kila or Dakota (childhood Pits). She’s still very much teething, so hopefully this stage will be the worse of the chewing. When Kila was a puppy, we came home to something new chewed up every day, so once a week, and sometimes not even that much, is a real blessing. This is one of the reasons we had decided not to get a Pit, but once I saw her…she was mine. J There was no walking away from that pretty little face. Anyway, enough of the mushy stuff…here’s the evidence.
Along those same lines…in the past few months, we’ve talked about dogs we’ll get in the future. When we’ll get another dog, what kind of dog we’ll get, etc. I’m not sure when we’ll get a second dog, but it will most likely be after our kids are a few years old and definitely once we’ve moved back to Raleigh, or wherever we end up, and have a larger yard. We haven’t for sure decided on a breed…if we did, we would probably change our minds anyway, but we have decided on a group. We agree that we want to stick with a bully breed. I’m young, but I’ve had dogs since before I could walk. I’ve had all sorts of breeds. Pits, a Boxer, a German Shepherd, a Lab, several Chihuahuas
So…why the mini rant? I get tired of the way these dogs are treated because of their breeds. Bailey doesn’t get it as much (so far)…maybe because she’s so cheery, but she does get it. It’s really irritating. Someone will come up to her, all happy and “what a cute puppy…what breed is she?” We get 1 of 2 reactions. 1) “I’ve had a Pit-X mix…she was a great dog”, “They’re really good dogs, I wish people didn’t give them that reputation” Something along those lines. OR 2) “Oh” blank stare. Yea...my little 5 month old bundle of joy who is so happy to meet you that she might beat you with her tail is going to rip your face off…you should run. Ignorant people really get to me. Josh mentioned that we should maybe list her as a Boxer/Lab to avoid anything like this, but I didn’t want to. No, she can’t go to doggy day care at PetSmart just because she’s a Pit mix, but that doesn’t matter since we don’t go there anymore. :-)
OK…I’m done now. Thanks for listening to my little rant.
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