Puppy Woes

Guess I should post one more time before the month is over.

I can't believe this is the last day of October! Weird.

'Tis been a busy week. (I'm not sure if that's even grammatically accurate, but I love "'tis', so there.) Sasha is a ball of energy galumphing through life with teeth barred and puppy eyes sparkling. She may be the bringer of sanity's departure around here. But I love her. (Now that I've recovered from buyer's remorse or whatever it was possessed me the first couple of days.) Especially in the morning, she's all energy. She'll bounce around obnoxiously for a couple hours (literally, she pounces and bounds all around the floor), crash in the middle of the floor and army crawl into a comfortable position to snooze, and start over with tormenting everyone and everything in sight. Especially Hershey. She's a brute to him.

We still have to find a kennel for her, and then a carpet shampooer for us. The whole only-go-potty-outside concept hasn't quite clicked yet.

Speaking of clicking, I bought a bag full of tasty puppy treats and a clicker with which to train her. We started this morning with sit. Another concept that hasn't quite computed is click = treat. She noticed the treats, realized I wanted her to sit, and started sitting pretty all over the floor and looking curiously at me out of the corner of her eye, totally disregarding the clicker. Yeah, this may take some work. She's quite intelligent, but her ADHD and the darker side of her personality take over a lot.

I really need to get a decent picture of the fluff ball to put on here.

Any way. My week.

Well, on Thursday we had to bring Sasha to co-op because leaving her alone with Hershey for 6 hours was not going to work. (He's still perpetually irritated at her. It's like how the cat treats him.) So I hid out in a back classroom no one was using, occasionally pulling in pals to ooh and ahh over the puppy, who was doing a remarkable job of looking perfectly innocent and sweet. Such a little actress. Mrs. Johnson was away with her youngest at a wedding, so I got to teach class. Thankfully the experiments were comprised mostly of water, though I had to comb my hair to get the comb electrically charged and felt rather like Rapunzel, only there wasn't just a cute chameleon watching me. While I was buy with science, Heather took charge of the puppy in her class of four.

When Mom came to get me to do routes, we brought Sasha home and headed out. When we returned around 2.5 hours later, both dogs were still breathing.

Friday through yesterday we girls joined most of the rest of the youth group at a camp a few hours NNW of here. 'Twas cold and gray most of the time, but in weather only. The youth retreat event itself was an adventure (a tiring one). Our youth pastor's wife deserves free hugs for a year and a bucketload of chocolate for the cabin in which she put me. It stayed clean and mostly quiet and we were drama-free. Lovely.

On the ride home, everyone in my van slept (except the driver, of course, though she was close).

We got back just before morning church let out. When everyone in the family was gathered, we had to drop off a paper Mom had forgotten about on routes that morning, then went to PetSmart for my puppy training tools, then McDonald's. As it was the 5th Sunday of the month, we had an afternoon service starting at 3, so didn't really have time to nap.

By the end of the day yesterday, it didn't feel like Sunday. We were home by 5 and watched a few movies and had a lazy evening.

This week I'm doing something new: Driver's Ed. Yeah, I'm freaked. It starts today. 13 days, Monday-Wednesday, or something like that.

So this is a really short post, I know, but it's taken me a good hour or more to get it finished because I'm busy keeping Sasha away from Hershey's new bone. I'll try to come back with something more worthwhile to write about next time.

The Beginning of the Holiday Season

I have an excuse for not getting back sooner: exhaustion. Up until Saturday, the week was normal. Church, co-op, a lazy day on Friday.

On Saturday, Mom and us girls headed out for a drive, just because. We headed up toward the Amish stores. On the way, we drove by a sporting goods store, and I commented that they sometimes had puppies. Mom (yes, I blame her) suggested we stop by to see if there were any puppies at the moment.

By now most of you know how the story ends. We saw yellow labs and some sort of Dachshund/chihuahua mix and something else I can't remember before we came to the truck where the lab/Aussie mixes were.

$40 for an 8-week-old, 1/4 Australian shepherd and 3/4 black lab puppy. For the last couple of months I've considered asking for a dog (even did at one point), especially now that I actually have some money. Suddenly, I was calling Dad and telling him to check out the message Mom had sent him: a picture of each of us girls with a fluffy black dog in our arms. And then he was okaying me to get one.

10 minutes later, as we drove away, me holding a puppy, I wondered, "Did I really just do that?"

Out of the four girls there, I couldn't pick one. Mom suggested I put my hand in the truck and call them over and take the first one that came. Only one came. The others kept playing and ignored me. That was easy.

Naming her was not so easy. It took a lot of time, but we eventually settled on Sasha.

It took about two days for reality to finally set in. Now that it has, I still wonder what on earth I've done. The first night, I started out with Sasha in a box in my room, but she wouldn't stop whining and it was late, so I let her sleep on my bed. She didn't stay still all night, and I got maybe two hours of sleep, between that and routes.

Sunday night she whined all night and I honestly didn't get a wink of sleep. By last night I was literally ready to cry I was so tired. We did everything we could to keep Sasha awake for the first few hours leading up to bedtime so she doesn't turn nocturnal. Then I pulled her box over to my bedside and keep a newspaper nearby. 20 minutes of getting a rap on the nose every time she made a noise made her quiet, and she went to sleep.

Ah, sleep.

(Seriously, on Sunday night we had our afterglow, and lack of sleep had put me in a very strange mood. Totally embarrassing.)

Now that I can think clearly, things are looking a little better.

Mom and Dad are convinced that by the time we get through her puppy stage, Hershey as a puppy will look like a field trip. She bites everything (even the shoes on your feet), she gets into everything, she picks on Hershey, she chases the cat.... The Aussie in her blood comes through in her intelligence. I'll be honest, how quickly she picks up on things compared to Hershey shocks me. We were living with a dog of slightly-less-than-average intelligence, and now we have one with high intelligence, as well as a saucy attitude. I'm scared.

So life hasn't really been boring, but I haven't done much else besides get a puppy. I made more laundry soap yesterday and managed to make an apple pie without Mom's help. I need to make another one today, because the last one is already gone.

Speaking of apples, I've become addicted to them lately. Mom got some a while ago from an orchard, and we've collected some here and there from paper route customers. But even with the three or four types of untreated apples from customers, I've found that only one doesn't give me any reaction at all. So I eat one or two a day now. I'd forgotten how good they were!

I can't think of anything else that's happened. Life progresses pretty normally.

As usual, I had something to share a few days ago but didn't, and now I've forgotten it. I suppose I'll try to come back in the next few days. I'll try to have pictures of my puppy ready to share by then. She hardly sits still long enough to get a decent picture.

Wait. I remember what it was! Last Tuesday Mom and I took most of the day to cook up a bunch of the apples we've collected. We finally turned on the Christmas music (normally we start in August, but not this year) and set to work. Mostly apple sauce and apple butter, but it helped me get into the holiday spirit. The perpetually gray skies and successive rainy days hasn't helped.

Now I'm suddenly remembering my week. My brain still isn't functioning at 100% capacity, if you couldn't tell.

During our drive on Saturday, after we got Sasha, Heather and I both got our first driving lessons. We start Driver's Ed in November (scary!). It wasn't too bad, though I was so nervous and tense that my shoulder got sore.

Also, last night, I saw northern lights for the second time in my life (that I can remember). Someday I might go someplace where they're bright and clear, but even here they're beautiful. There was a large patch of red and ribbons of white in a clear sky full of stars. Amazing.

So this week has been super crazy, and also a bit of a learning week for me.