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The newest addition to our family

Well, T and I just got back from criss-crossing the province, and actually leaving it, in search of our newest baby. We drove nearly 450km today, but she’s home. She doesn’t have a name yet, but she will before the night is out. She’s a GSD Husky cross and is six weeks old.

Puppy facing left (my left)

Puppy Profile

Puppy’s face

(Sorry about the shitty quality of the photies, but they were taken on my cellphone camera under low light conditions.

 

UPDATE: Not even and hour later: Her name is Elizabeth. Mutty’s proper name is Cleopatra, so sticking with the theme, Elizabeth is named for Queen Elizabeth (I think I may actually have been decided about 3 weeks ago, but it’s only just been confirmed).

UPDATE: A little after 9am, day 2: Well, we’ve managed to keep Elizabeth alive for a little over 12 hours. I had a 5am clean-up-some-shit session, followed by a walk-about-the-lawn session. Then another hour and a half sleep. Yay.

I also managed to get a half decent photo of her this morning.

Elizabeth, first morning

Now she’s sleeping. Why does she get to sleep?

UPDATE: Morning, day 3: It was another night of walks on the grass and playing tug-of-war with a piece of leather at 4am. Still, she seemed to be better: less whining and slightly more sleeping. I am hopeful that by 2010 I’ll be able to get a full nights rest.

We had a braai yesterday afternoon and I got this picture of Elizabeth and Cleopatra sleeping on the grass. It looks all friendly here, but Mutty is not exactly all too happy about her younger sister. There’s no bloodshed, but Mutty just doesn’t want anything to do with her… yet. Wait till she figures out Lizzy likes to play, then things will change.

Elizabeth and Cleopatra sleeping on the grass.

By the way, that’s not a full sized tennis ball, our pets aren’t that small.

UPDATE: Morning, day 4: Sleep? Sleep? What’s that? I don’t think she slept from about 2:30am, which, of course means that T and I, and the cats, and Mutty haven’t slept since then either. It looks like a zombie movie here – the one with a crazed puppy running around.

The crazed puppy.

In other news, I took her to our vet for her checkup, shots and deworming. It seems she’s healthy, and she now has her own little passport. She doesn’t like the car, she whined all the way there and all the way back; but she has no problem with the vet. That will change, of course: soon she’ll love the car and hate the vet.

During a play session yesterday afternoon, I set the cellphone camera to burst mode and got T to call the puppy, so I could get some shots of her sprinting across the grass. I made this little animation from the 4 shot burst that I got (it loops, so if you missed it, just give it a couple of seconds and it will start again).

Running across the lawn.

UPDATE: Morning, day 5: Well, my wife and I now sleep in separate rooms. Not because we hate each other, but because we want to sleep. T uses the spare room and locks herself and Mutty in there and has a good night’s rest. I use the main bedroom and ignore Elizabeth and get a good night’s sleep. The system works.

Yesterday I decided to up the technology stakes, and switch the cellphone camery to video mode. Here are the results (and remember to lie your head on your left shoulder while watching the first one — I’ll have to figure out how to rotate videos to make this work)

UPDATE: Morning, day 6: The sleeping system is still working. So Elizabeth wanders around the house causing untold havok, most of which I’m sure I haven’t even found yet, while T and I sleep in our separate beds, she locked away safely and me in ignorant, overtired bliss.

I got this little pic yesterday afternoon when T came home from work. Everybody together. Looks tranquil, but I tell you there was a fair amount of hissing and growling going on.

The whole family.

We then went and had a little puppy training class in the back. In the first pic it looks like she’s gotten the hang of it, but it’s a trick of the camera. She hates it. Alot.

Leash training.

Leash tug-o-war.

Still, she’s wearing the collar now, and it doesn’t seem to bother her.

UPDATE: Morning, day 7: Well, she’s dead.

Elizabeth, dead.

Okay, she’s not. She does like to sleep like that sometimes though. When it’s hot, the tiles cool her down. Alternatively, she sleeps against the food bowls in the kitchen, sometimes with her face in the water bowl.

Elizabeth sleeping against the food bowls.

She’s been quite good, surprisingly. She keeps herself entertained with her chew, or with the little green ball.

UPDATE: Morning, day 8: Elizabeth made a major break-through yesterday. She got Cleopatra to agree to a romp in the grass. At first Mutty was far from agreeable.

Puppy’s attack

But Elizabeth is persistent. Very persistent. And soon we had a wild play session that involved lots of ear chewing, growling, rolling around, jumping and running about.

Elizabeth and Cleopatra in action

After a good play session on the front lawn, Elizabeth decided to go and inspect an innocent looking bush. She came away in rather a hurry, after her nose was whacked by the bush(?).

Jenny in the bush

Today we are going to a wedding of some friends, which means we’ll be away for most of the day. I imagine, Mutty will try to sleep most of the day, but now that Lizzy knows she can get Mutty to agree to a game, I’m sure there’ll be a bit of that too. I hope the house is not too trashed when we get back.

UPDATE: Monday, 5th March: The house was, surprisingly, not trashed when we got back. They must have taken it easy while we were away, because when we got bac, Lizzy was all sorts of excited. She chewing toes, chewing fingers, chewing anything lying around (except for cables).

Yesterday was an exciting day for the children. First we bathed them. I bathed Elizabeth first. This was not something she was happy about. She was whining and shivering, and not from cold — she is part husky after all. Then T bathed Mutty, who is an absolute pleasure to bath. She stands there, and turns around when requested, and allows herself to be washed on all sides.

A little later in the afternoon we took them for a walk. We walked up to the shop and back in a circular route, which took us a 40 minutes. Elizabeth did this very, very well; leash and all. I was quite surprised, as initially I had said to T, “Okay, let’s take Lizzy for a drag.” It was hot though, and when we got back Elizabeth practically collapsed into the water bowl.

Twenty minutes later she was up and good to go again. She doesn’t so much sleep, as charge, and she’s got that fancy Sony Ericsson optimized charging facility.

We then brushed them outside. After T brushed Mutty, I had a go at brushing Lizzy, more for the show of it than anything else. Of course Lizzy thought this was a great game. I’m sure I was brushing more fur on to her, than off.

Finally they had another play session. Mutty figured out that she’s, for the time being, much faster than Lizzy, and went charging around the garden like a speed train.

Anyway, the reason there are no inline photies is because I have created a gallery of all the photos since Elizabeth arrived (and one or two from before). You can find it here: Elizabeth’s own little photo gallery.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 7th March: Elizabeth and Mutty now have at least two play sessions a day. Elizabeth has managed to get Mutty to play in the morning, which is quite an achievement considering that Mutty is grumpy like I am in the morning.
T brought Elizabeth a new toy. It’s a ring chew, and she loves it. She sticks her little nose in it, and we play tug-of-war with it, and she carries it around.

Last night, Elizabeth figured out that digging is fun. Clearly this is something that Mutty taught her, ’cause I didn’t go around digging in the flower beds. She dug herself a good hole in a sandy spot. (There’s some new pics in the photo gallery: the digging pics are a bit grainy because it was getting dark already).

UPDATE: Friday, 9th March: Elizabeth has been a nightmare. She’s friggen hyperactive. She’s running around, chewing everything, and just being an all round pain in the ass. She’s also doubling in size daily. The reason she can dig so well is because she doesn’t have paws, she has shovels.

This morning she and Mutty had a play session which must have involved running around in the dew wet flower beds because afterwards Mutty looked like this:

Dirty Mutty

Elizabeth has become stubborn too (like father like daughter). Here she is, wanting to get out while Jenny wants to get in. Jenny’s stubborn too (like father like daughter) so this situation was like this for a good while. I don’t know who backed down, by then I had gotten bored and left.

Elizabeth and Jenny being Stubborn

UPDATE: Sunday, 11th March: Well, she’s 8 weeks old and still alive. T is back from PE, and her first impression was how much bigger Lizzy had gotten. Did I mention she was doubling in size everyday?

I have some success with the training. She comes when I call her, and she does sit on command. Stay is still a little too much to ask for from something that has the attention span of a retarded housefly. We’ll get there.

Also, Lucia sent back a puppy toy with T, and we love it!

Lizzy with her new toy

I have updated the gallery with the latest photies, and also broken it up into weeks.

UPDATE: Friday, 16th March: It’s official: she’s learned to jump on the couch. Yesterday I was sitting working away when I heard the growlings of a game going on. I didn’t turn around, as I was rather busy, but thought to myself, “That’s great. Mutty and Lizzy are playing.” It was only a little while later that I realized that they were playing on the couch.

Playing is happening a lot. Really. They play five times a day. Which I guess is mission accomplished since we got Lizzy as a companion for Mutty.

Anyway, the week 3 gallery has been updated, and there you can see the numerous play sessions.

UPDATE: Sunday, 18th March: Well, we left them alone at home last night while we went to watch Slugs of War play at McGinties in Pretoria for St. Paddies Day. We stayed over at friends to watch the F1GP at 4:30am. So they were at home, alone, for an entire 14 hours. And all that was destroyed was one of T’s slippers (which is her own fault really: she knew Lizzy found them delectable, but they were left out).

Lizzy likes to “swim” in the water bowls that we have strewn all over the house. So this afternoon I decided to fill up the green (turtle-in-a-half-) shell and see what she does with that. Turns out she loves it. She jumps in, gets wet, realizes she’s not too happy about it, and jumps out again. And then realizes that the water was nice and cool, and back in. And then she decided to eat the shell. You can’t win ‘em all.

Lizzy in the shell

There is a massive update to the week 3 gallery. Enjoy.