The Adventures of Charlie

So, upon getting our new little furry bundle of joy... a couple of people referenced the dog Marley from the story Marley and Me. We hoped that we were not getting a handful of trouble like Marley, though we would love him either way.

He has been very good with training so far. The potty training is a work in progress but it has been one with more positive results then negative.

He knows the commands for Sit and Come. We are working on Heal and Stay.

He also knows Lay Down and Paws. He is AMAZING at fetch, he brings it back every time until he is done with the game and ready to move one. We are also working on "Drop It"... it's been a 50/50 result there.

Not bad for a pup at 11 weeks! I have been utterly impressed with his intellect!

Anyhoo... we are crate training him and he loves his room. It is the kind of crate where the door needs to be lifted in order to get the latch into the corresponding loop and then there is an additional lock to secure the door from being lifted to open.

Last week Charlie woke me up with a little whine. I woke up thinking "Well that's odd, he sounded like he was in our room on the floor..." I sat up to see him sitting on the floor next to our bed and woke my husband up to point it out.

This little stunt earned him a new nickname (among the few he already has). He is now aka Houdini. :)

This time was our fault for failing to lock the lock thinking he wouldn't be able to lift the door to open it. Well lesson learned.

Or was it.... This morning at 5am I hear a bark. I decide to get up to see if Charlie needs to go outside. When I walked out of my room I see three pairs of my husband's shoes sitting outside his crate (the shoes are almost bigger then the dog) and the crate door is wide open, but charlie is no where to be seen.

I call for him and he comes running out of the living room. Very excited to see me. I am not sure how long he was out, but I decided to take him out just in case. He seemed scare when I picked him up and huddled close to me. My guess is that he knew he had been a bad boy and was worried he was in trouble.

He had a few accidents inside while he was out, so naturally he didn't have to go when we were outside.

I placed Houdini back into his room, gave him a cookie and closed and LOCKED the crate door and proceeded to go back to bed for my last 2 hours of sleep before I had to get up for work.

I checked with my hubby and he says that he locked it. So we are not sure how Houdini managed the great escape this time. Part of me is tempted to get a little nanny cam to catch it next time. Would be interesting to see.

Just thought it was a funny story. Hope you enjoyed it. :)

Puppy Love

My husband and I finally (after almost 3 years) got a new dog. Our last dog came to us late in his life and we loved him very much. Unfortunately we had to put him down right before our wedding because he got sick and there were few options that were fair to him.

After waiting until we were ready, we starting looking for one a while back. We decided to check out the classifieds. The old school way of advertising for pets and sales, etc. in your local area. We ended up answering an ad on eBay Classifieds for Lab Mix pups in Brooklyn, NY.

We drove out on May 14th and got us a cute little fur-baby boy. He is 8 weeks old and he is BEAUTIFUL. He is a Silver Lab mix. I had never heard of a silver lab before... so I googled it and they are gorgeous and rare... He is Gray with Blue Eyes. His coloring is so unique and his eyes just make him one gorgeous pup.

His name is CHARLIE (I call him Stinky sometimes too, lol). You can see his picture over in the right column. Stay tuned for more pictures of Charlie as I am in LOVE with him and completely obsessed with taking his picture. I refer to myself as the Puparazzi. ;) I think I will update the pic as he gets bigger & older...

We took him to his first vet appointment where he tested negative for worms & parasites. YAY!! He had his nails trimmed and was given his distemper shot. Going back in three weeks for round two.

We are finally getting a crate for him tonight and will begin his crate training. He has been as good as can be expected being gated in the kitchen. He has minimal accidents and he is getting so good at going potty outside. :) The crate training will just bring that to 100% no accidents when we're at work & in between our breaks to come home and let him out.

We've also started the BELL training for outside. Ivan Pavlov is a genius (If you don't know, google it)! Our vet recommended that we place a bell on or near the door to outside and ring that bell every time we take him outside to go potty. Within a couple of days he should pick it up and go ring the bell to let us know he needs to go out. I really hope this works because that would be AWESOME!!! :) We are on day three of that training today.

I am so excited about him that I had to share. I am sure many of my upcoming blogs will be about Charlie or Charlie related things. :)

Stay tuned and thanks for stopping by.