New Puppy - Day 3

We lost our wonderful dog, Cash, last fall to liver failure and since then I have always assumed we would get another dog.  It took me several months to feel that I was ready for a new member of the family and I wanted to wait till the holidays were over and I knew I would have time to devote to a puppy.  Our show in Oxford, MS was the last weekend in January so after I gave myself a week to rest up, it was time.

Enter Sadie.  We stopped by the Citizens for Animal Protection (CAP) animal shelter last Friday to see what puppies were available.  A puppy seemed the way to go since we have cats and lots of livestock and we didn't want to bring in a full grown dog with issues.  We started off in the puppy room but looked at all the dogs.  Wow.  What a cross-section of canines - large and small, old and young, gorgeous and not so.  The CAP facility is wonderful - clean and orderly.  It even smelled good.  The personnel were helpful and knowledgeable.  Sadie was the very first puppy in the very first crate we saw but we looked at all the dogs before we came back to her.

CAP had labeled her as 50% black lab/50% border collie.  Our vet saw her yesterday and says he agrees with the black lab half but would have called her 25% border collie/25% handsome stranger.  We'll have to wait and see what she looks like full grown.  I'm hoping for a border collie brain and no black lab smell but we will take whatever we get.  She is 14 weeks old and weighs 18 pounds.  The first appointment time available for her to be spayed was Sunday morning so we picked her up Sunday afternoon.

Sunday night she was calm and slow and sleepy - the normal lethargy after anesthesia for surgery.  Monday morning, however, she was hell on wheels - bright and perky and wanting to run.  We are supposed to keep her moving slowly for the next week.  Hmmm....  We are walking her outside on a leash so she isn't running around the property like she wants to but keeping her at a walk in the house is impossible.  She has the normal puppy bi-polar thing going... run, party, howl at the night then crash and sleep.  And she is chewing on everything with sharp little puppy teeth.  We only get a puppy about every ten years or so so remembering all the process is difficult...

There is housebreaking and crate training...

There is learning to ride in the mule...

And there is meeting the livestock.  Cash always fed the animals with me and I assume Sadie will do the same.  I went out to walk her earlier and decided now was the time.  We walked up to the top of the property to meet the llamas, alpacas and goats.  The llamas were very concerned as we approached; the goats were definitely interested but not terribly concerned.  The alpacas thought the world was coming to an end which is their reaction to everything.  Sadie was very good.  She would have liked to chase the first llama but after that she laid down by the fence and sniffed their various smells and watched intently.  Intently as in really interested not intently as in ready to strike.  I think we will be fine in the long run we just need to go and visit the animals on a leash for as long as it takes.