Eevee is O-N-E!

A whole year, a whole year- 365 days! How is this possible that it went by so quickly?! Most of it has been lovely while the rest of it has been……. a challenge. We knew having a puppy would be hard but boy oh boy she definitely took me for a spin. I never realized how different a big dog would be next to a dachshund. Our decision to get a puppy in the middle of a pandemic was a quick one. We did talk about getting a bigger dog for the last few years but since our roommates last year had their Moro we fell in love and I researched and found a breeder we could get to. We made sure to get her acclimated pretty quickly and she knew she was spoiled from the first moment she came home. The doxies have always been great and played with her well and otherwise tolerated her the rest of the time. Once she grew and became larger than them- she realized she holds the power and can push them around a bit. We started training off as soon as she had her shots all completed- we decided to use a trainer that a fellow liter mate was recommending.

Our trainer is named Katie and she is with a company here called Lucid Dog Training. We did an initial set of eight lessons digitally during CV last year; when we didn’t feel comfortable traveling across town and being exposed to new people.She started out with simple attention techniques and commands that get her to pay attention and focus on us. Then she slowly learned sit, wait, bed, lie down, come, spin and look (pay attention). The next phase was heel, building on old commands and full refresher course. The away that she is so quick to please and being a golden retriever that’s common. In June we started a second round but after struggling with our health issues and lots of stress we decided to wait and let Eevee go through her heat/get spayed. In addition to getting a few home renovations completed before beginning again. I need to keep working on her heel and walking calmly- as she’s grown her affinity for overexcitement Is profound. She was going on regular walks with me to the mailbox but i know she needs much more than that. The weather was so extreme that I couldn’t stand to take her out walking very far. That’s puppy life, it’s zero to 100 and back again, for each and every event that occurs during the day.

We don’t have her crated at night at all, we are the crazy family with a bed full of dogs. However we love it (most of the time)! Her inner clock in the fall so far has been “lets get up super early!” and bother mom jumping on the bed until they HAVE to get up to put me out to pee! We’ve taken her to the groomers a few times after she grew out of the sink/tub and she’s done so great every time and seems to like the car rides pretty well too.

She is on some sort of routine as far as morning and evening meals go so that’s great and she does tell me now and cue me to go out through the day and we are past accidents. We are getting turf put in our yard here in a few weeks so once that’s done- I feel like the zoomies won’t be as crazy and messy. One side of our yard will still have some dirt for the time being but the potty situation with three dogs will be much more manageable.

The dogs in this litter were all very similar and also very different! I am bummed that we couldn’t make it to the meetup (not sure if it happened or not). But with COVID it made things very complicated. Also I didn’t want to take her around the brothers until she was fixed which will happen at the end of the year we are thinking. But we all stay in touch and constantly show pics and funny antics which I love and am so glad we have like a puppy family! I want to share the puppy versus now pictures and their names- all of them are cute and I can’t wait to meet them and remember how rolly polly they were at five weeks when we visited!