BATHTIIIIIIMEEEEEEEE

Also for any of you who were interested - the lime juice thing works great! We went to dinner in Portland with Mom and Dad and a friend's family and she was barking up a storm. Until she met the lime! .

In which Lola...

smells like a crab
weighs 20 lbs
and chews a shoe

Yes, it was somewhat of an unfortunate evening. On the plus side I didn't feel compelled to take a shower for awhile after the gym... And the vet said Lola is the perfect weight! As far as the shoe chewing I guess that is my punishment for talking on the phone. Point taken Lola... We'll try again tomorrow

Puppy School. Day 1.

Well my first impression of puppy school is that it's quite biased towards multi-person homes. There are are some excersizes that require two people that we do in class and... well.... it's kindof like needing someone to do the three legged race and having.... Lola. Who is great in general, but not particularly helpful when we need to pretend like there's someone else there helping me to do whatever activity it is. So I think there should be a single-person-puppy school where they don't do any partner excersizes. Or they should provide a partner when you have a very friendly and happy and excitable puppy who just wants to bounce around and smell everything. I may find someone on the street and pay them $20 to help me next week (just kidding mom.... no strangers) But if anyone else wants to come I'll pay you with a six pack!

Otherwise puppy school was great! Lola was very wiggly and excited to get to know all of the people and puppies but besides being a little overexcitable she was very good. There are also a lot of puppies around her size which helps. There's a golden, two labs, a heeler (I think), a boxer, a gigantic puppy that I have no idea what it is, and an assortment of small dogs. After getting a good look at the boxer I'm not so sure that Lola has a lot of boxer in her (she's way cuter and her head is about ten times bigger) But we worked on 'sit' and 'come' and some excersizes for how to teach them to be held and lifted and restrained etc. Lola was very good at those because I'm still toting her around half the time... even though she's getting a little large! In fact did a bunch of situps on Monday and when I went to pick her up Tuesday morning it was quite the struggle! Today we go to the vet again to get her rabies shots (yay!) and so I'll update you with her weight. If she's continued gaining what she was between her last two trips to the vet she should be around 22-23 lbs. oh boy! 

Also fun fact for those of you who have dogs - the way the lady said to train them to be quiet is to use lime juice and to squirt it in their mouth when they're barking and say 'quiet'. Apparently the lime juice is very sour and they really don't like it. We're also supposed to practice that next week but the only time Lola barks is actually at puppy school... so that's a blessing and a curse I guess. Shes' quiet but she also can't practice. C'est la vie.

Update from the vet will be coming soon!

Small Dog... Pointy Teeth

Well all I can say is thank goodness puppy school starts tonight! Although Lola is sometimes sweet and snuggly she can also be quite sharp.... literally. And her little teeth love to destroy shoes, socks, and anything with ruffles. Thankfully I've mostly directed this destructive energy towards old stinky shoes instead of my fingers. In fact dad gave her a shoe last week which continues to be her favorite 'toy'. The stinky shoe even beats a kong filled with peanut butter! Now that I've got this figured out Lola has become quite a cheap pet. We no longer go to Petco... we just go to Mom and Dad's closet and pick out an old shoe! It's quite the shopping experience and everyone (except the shoe) comes away very satisfied with the arrangement. Interestingly enough she also seems to only pick one shoe out of the pair to demolish. As such she's consumed my left flip-flop, dad's right sandal, and an ambiguously-owned right footed Croc. Oh Lola.....

She's growing up so fast!

Ok so I understand that Lola will get bigger and someday grow up into a big dog who does all sorts of big dog things. What I didn't (until now) understand is that when she was visiting mom and dad she would do all sorts of growing up so fast! For example*:
She is learning the importance of recycling

She can walk all by herself now

And she... helps with the dishes? Heck I never even helped with the dishes! Maybe Lola is an upgrade from me? I'm thinking she might be...

I can't believe my little puppy is growing up so fast! Also she starts school this week.This week only I went to puppy class and I realized what an awesome puppy Lola is. The woman was going through all of the potential problems with puppies such as fear of collars, fear of leashes, fear of kennels, being shy and not good at meeting dogs and people, not walking on a leash... and I realized that Lola does all of these things! so extra treats for the good puppy! I'm very excited to take her to school though... She already sits on command pretty well but 'stay' would be very helpful. Especially when she gets excited and becomes a terror! Also in an accidental head-butting incident today I can testify that she has a very hard head and it would probably benefit her brain cells if she didn't get so excited and careen into walls like a racecar driver. She either needs more traction on her wheels to make it around the corners, or she needs to listen to me when I tell her to slow down. Hopefully puppy class can only help!
*all photo credits to mom this week! Thanks to mom and dad for watching Lola!

A typical day.

6:15  - I get up. Lola lays in her kennel and looks at me until I decide that she can snuggle for a few minutes
6:30 - We snuggle.

6:50 - Now I really have to go to work so I take Lola out to use the potty (as long as it's not on my floor I'm happy) and I put her in her kennel.
7:00 - I leave for work. Lola is asleep in her Dogloo.
5:00 - I return home. Completely mystified as to what Lola may have been up to as her toys are strewn all over the kennel, her food is gone, and yet she is still asleep in her Dogloo.
5:30 - We get it together to go for our walk.
6:00 - It's hot out... Lola overheats and heads for the bushes in hope of shade/camoflauge. Maybe if I can't figure out where she is we can't continue on our walk.....

6:45 - We make our way home where Lola is alternately a sleeping beauty/waking terror. When she is terrorizing she puts everything she can find in her mouth and crawls under everything she can. This includes hands, toes, socks, toys, anything with ruffles.... etc. When she's asleep or being cute she looks a lot like this:

9:00 - We sit down to watch TV and snuggle some more. 

10:00 - We go upstairs to go to bed. Sometimes she goes right into her kennel... sometimes she tries to eat my clothing and steal shoes from the closet... I usually win out though and by 10:30 she's sawing logs. 

It's a pretty good life and she's a pretty good puppy so I can't complain at all :) She's spending the next few days at Mom and Dad's while I do some training for work so any updates from me will be sans-Lola. I miss her very much but I know that she's getting a lot of love in Corvallis! 

Lola's First Trip to the Beach!

Hello!
So sorry I didn't update this weekend but we had another busy weekend. Rachel (my friend who's on a cross-country road trip from Jacksonville, Florida) is here and so we decided to go out to the beach on Sunday! We went to Cannon Beach and it was a beautiful sunny day! (I tried to explain to Rachel that this was good weather... she said the water was cold enough that her toes went numb.... I suppose it's all a matter of perspective) Anyways Lola loved the beach! And the beach loved Lola... Rachel counted and over 40 people stopped to pet her! She loves people and dogs and really anything where there's a chance that it could love her back (except Llamas... she's not a fan)