Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas! I wanted to share some pictures from Christmas at our house (pictures of the dogs, of course :-). After sleeping in (yay!) and unwrapping people presents, I gave the dogs some wrapped stuffy toys to unwrap. Our pet dog, Cash, LOVES unwrapping gifts. He will actually rip the paper off until he can grab what's inside and pull it out, and then he leaves the paper and plays with the toys. He's so funny! Then we went out to see Rocky Balboa. So, OMSI got to see his second movie. He did very well and slept almost the whole time. He only tried to get up once at the very end.
Before unwrapping presents, I took a group shot of our dogs. Here's the run-down:
Cash (Australian Shepherd), 11 1/2 years old, completely deaf
Kippy (Lab/Greyhound? x), approx. 9 years old, slightly neurotic
Zen (Weimaraner), 3 1/2 years, my sister's dog
Dakota/Cody (Golden), 1 1/2 years, a dog I'm training for someone
OMSI (Golden), 5 months, my current CCI puppy :-)
Cozy (Golden in picture on Right), 3 years, puppysitting over Christmas
Hopefully from this description you can pick out who is who :-) Merry Christmas!

First Movie

OMSI went to his first movie tonight. We saw the Nativity Story with my parents, and at least it is age-appropriate for a young puppy (it's PG :-). OMSI was a bit restless at the very beginning, and definitely perked his ears at some of the sounds at first. After that he slept most of the time and only tried to get up a couple times (I had my foot on his leash, so he couldn't). I am very pleased with how well he did at his first movie experience! I need to work on longer down-stays, but I'm sure that will come in time. I didn't take my camera, so no pictures :-( We're going to another movie on Christmas day (family tradition), so OMSI will probably get to go along as well. Merry Christmas!

Dog Tag

Tag! You're it! We've been "tagged" by Patience. This means that I have to list three things that OMSI wants to receive for Christmas and three things he does NOT want to receive for Christmas. Then, we get to "tag" 5 other pups by posting a comment on their blog. Fun!

Three things OMSI would LOVE for Christmas:
1) a Quiet Spot for his tags so people don't no notice him when he's out and about
2) Squeaky toys!!!
3) a new bone

Three things OMSI would HATE to get for Christmas:
1) His playmate Cody going home (which sadly will happen sometime soon)
2) a bath
3) a citronella bark collar (well, too late, he already got one :-)

OMSI chooses to "tag" Jaba, Spring, Marcella, Avril, and Juneau.

5 months old!

Wow! Where did the time go? OMSI is 5 months old today! He weighs 34 pounds which seems pretty small. As a comparison, his dad Blaze weighed 33lbs at FOUR months old, and he is only 65lbs full grown. And Baja weighed 45 pounds at 5 months old and is about 72lbs at 1 1/2 years old. So, I think OMSI is going to be a small dog (but, I don't mind! Small is nice!).
OMSI has started going out more places with me, and he's doing fairly well. He seems sensitive to sudden loud noises, but recovers quickly. And, I'm happy to say that I think he's pretty much housetrained...he hasn't had an accident in a while (see, I can't even remember the last one he had :-). He's been having more freedom in the house now that he's asking to go out consistently, and he's been doing very well. We have an x-pen around the christmas tree, so he's not tempted to help undecorate it. He hasn't chewed or ripped anything up, and really the only naughty thing he's done is eat bits of wood that fell on the ground by the fireplace.
We had a huge wind storm here yesterday and our power has been out since yesterday afternoon. So, I didn't get a chance to take a picture of him today before the sun went down, so I'll try to take a picture tomorrow morning if it's not raining.
Yay!! The power just came back on as I was typing!!

Risa

I had the opportunity to puppysit Risa (a Blaze puppy) last week. I had puppysat her for two weeks in July right after she arrived until after her PRs turned-in their first dog, and I was thrilled to have her back again. She is now 6 months old and 50lbs, but still the same sweetie she was as a little pup. Sadly, she had contagious mouth warts (although harmless), so I didn't let her play with OMSI at all. But, I discovered that she liked to play fetch :-) It was fun to see the similarities between the two (and their dad, Blaze):

1) both love to hear themselves "talk" (i.e. bark, whine, "happy growl"), especially when they feel left out of things. Risa also let us know that she usually wakes up around 5:30 or 6 am.

2) both are great snugglers :-)

3) both are lickers (and working on breaking the habit)

4) both love toys and playing fetch

Here are some pictures. It was interesting trying to take pictures of the two in the snow since my cat, Rebel, decided to come see what was going on (he didn't help much, either, since I was having the hardest time getting both to look at me at the same time!). So, I ended up picking up the cat, which worked great.

Our puppy class last week took a field trip to Ben Franklin's, which was where I met Risa's puppy raisers to give her back. So, we took lots of pictures there, too :-)