This photo was taken one of the few times she's not either playing with Sirius, chewing (probably something she shouldn't) or cuddled up against you like the sweetest baby you've ever seen. Her name is Teal (for some reason that week they were all named after colors), I don't think it fits her, so I've been calling her Little Girl, which is also lame, but coming up with a name is hard. Daemon was "puppy" for about 3 weeks after we got him. Sirius was named on the way home, but we had 16 hours, so that's a lot of thinking and discussing time.
Anyway, I got her and her two sisters about 2 weeks ago on a Tuesday. One of them looked just like Teal, the other was white with black splotches. They were adopted before I got photos of them (only had them 2 days) and I have no idea why Teal is taking so long to go. She is just as cute and sweet as they were
The first night she was here without her sibs, we put her back in the x-pen where they had been staying, and she screamed and whined for over a half-hour. This totally make sense. It was mean of us to even try this, but it gets difficult with all the critters in the house. She had probably never been alone for a second in her life before that night; she was always with her mom and/or sibs. I really, honestly, believe that it is cruel to force a dog to sleep in a room alone. Not cruel to keep them in a crate or on a dog bed, if that is what you prefer, but cruel to leave them all alone, especially when they are very young or in a strange, new environment. Dogs are pack animals, descended from wolves, and they would rarely or never be alone if left to their own devices. Sleeping together is one thing the pack always does, so when you bring a dog into your home/pack, you owe it to them to sleep in the same room. It's important to cement the bond you will share.
Anyway, I couldn't do the tough love thing, so we brought her into the bed with us. Our dogs, of course, are always welcome to sleep in the bed; one of them does, one of them doesn't. Normally, I would set up a pen next to the bed for a foster, but basically, I was exhausted and took the path of least resistance. It turned out to be a great thing for this particular dog. She curled up between our pillows with her head on Tony's neck, fell fast asleep and slept till morning without getting up. She's been doing the same thing ever since. We put a puppy pad at the foot of the bed, and if she needs to potty, she hops off the bed and goes, and then gets back in bed. This wouldn't work with many 8 week old puppies, but it did with her, and once we saw how much she loved snuggling with us, we were glad we did it. Fostering one dog is much different than fostering a litter. You get to know them better because you have so much more one on one time with them. You also get more attached. She and Sirius have become fast friends.
He may like having foster puppies more than I do. He will be two years old in April, which is pretty young, but I think he's a dog who will always be a puppy at heart. My perma-puppy!
In other news, I finally bound and washed a quilt that had been sitting around, almost finished, for several months. I have it in my head that binding takes forever, but now that I do it by machine, it's really no big deal. A couple of hours, max. It turned out great, and I now have another quilt hanging around the place.
I do love this line of fabric; Eva by Basic Gray. I have still more of it to use...wonder how?
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