missive from Zombie Land

In the afternoon, when we were feeling closer to Zombie than Completely Dead, we decided we needed to venture forth for chicken to make soup. Hope got her introduction to her new collar, leash and the wonderful world of walkies. She walked part of the way and got carried the rest so we could work on loose lead walking without taking 5 hours to go to the grocery. We got a nice bit of socialization in and she got to walk on grass, cement, bluestones and bricks. She got to see several groups of people including a bunch of kids playing basketball and a skateboarder, lots of cars, plenty of pedestrians carrying crinkly bags and wearing hats, a dude with a beard and a bunch of prams. We walked by the train station and she heard the trains, train horns and airbrakes and an alley which required a bit of encouragement to come up through. We also got 4 border collie comments, including one who said, "I've never seen a Border Collie with brown above it's eyes like that!" (You still haven't, she's an Aussie Shepherd.)

Besides loose lead walking we also worked on greeting protcols (aka, bouncing doesn't work, sit your bum on the ground if you want pets", doggy zen (aka "mugging mum's hand won't work, waiting patiently will") and settling in your spot (aka "food rains from heaven when puppies sit here!"

Also doing really well in the crate at night and with house-training.

ETA Photos! First a few of The Bubby Lala I took the day before at the park! :-)

Having great fun climbing all around this great big old tree and it's massive roots!

Feeling pretty sad in both of these as I'd put him back in the pram and run out of dates. He loves them almost as much as watermelon but they're a treat being twice as exxy as bananas atm! Actually it's a darn shame these are B&W as they show the split colour in his eyes quite clearly...The inner half is blue, the outer half is brown.


One of my future dog trainer with Sierra! ;-) That's a bag of treats in his hands!

Meeting Hope....

These two are going to be BEST mates, I can tell! They are SO adorable together but definitely a handful!

One of me and the little girlie. I tell you butter wouldn't melt in her mouth!

One from the Specialty, the blue merle dog I'm holding is Courage, Hope's sire and hope being held by her breeder on my other side.

"Hiding" from the big dogs... hoping to get the jump on them in a game of chase. She seemed to think that if she couldn't see them through the foliage, they couldn't see her - despite her fuzzy black rump sticking up!

The Hooligans get down with a good game of tuggy!

And a few close ups of her resting (!) in the yard. I am still trying to learn how to photograph a black dog properly. The other trick will be figuring out a way to keep her at least 2" from the lense so I don't have a zillion photos of a blackish blur rushing me!


Sorry for the delay. I had a whole post put up but apparently for whatever buggering reason IT DIDN'T POST!!! In my defense, all three of us came down with gastro and I had a major fever and was just generally feeling like death would indeed be preferable! BLECH!!!