Friday, December 28, 2007

Keisha’s first Christmas

I haven’t written in awhile. Christmas went well. The tree was left standing, and I only had to re-decorate the bottom of it because Keisha runs under it sometimes, and the only ornament that was broken was by me! I don’t think that’s toobad at all! I even decorated the side of the kitchen counter and Keisha didn’t bother it at all! I’ve been very impressed!


On Christmas morning my mom called and I sat in front of the tree while I was talking to her to open our gifts. I helped Sophie open her stuffed snowman that my mom gave her, and then I let Keisha out of her crate. I put the short leash on her to keep her from diving into the gifts! She had been wanting to get at them when I was putting them under the tree the night before! I gave her the gift my mom sent her and she ripped it open herself. She tore at the paper and then shook her head really fast so the paper flew off. It was a stuffed gingerbread man that smells like gingerbread! She loves it! It actually smells really good. My mom also sent them a huge box of treats in the shape of a dog house. It has ten bags of treats in it. That should last them awhile!

On Boxing Day my uncle and cousin came to visit. It was the first time Keisha met them and she was so excited I had to keep her in her crate for most of the time they were here. Sophie was really excited to see Uncle Glen again too!

I’ve noticed that Keisha is growing out of her biting stage lately! I’m so glad! She use to try to bite everything! Now when she’s really excited she will still bite at my hand a bit, but she mostly licks now. I think some of it has to do with working on targeting with her. I use my hand as the target because I thought that I could teach her both the targeting and teach her to not bite at the same time.

She has also learned “sit”, “down”, “come”, “stay” and we are working on “heel”. She will have “heel” completed really soon and we are continuing to work on staying for longer periods of time. I know it might seem like a painfully slow process, but I am making sure she knows one command and has a really good grasp on it before moving onto the next. I need her commands to be “solid” when I start teaching her guide work. Over the weekend I’m thinking about teaching her take clothes out of the dryer. I thought this would be fun for her, and that it’s easier to start with than teaching her to pick up something and bring it back to me. It’s in a smaller area and she is just the right height to reach inside of the dryer now. I’m trying to decide if I want to use “get” or “take” with her though. I taught Sophie with “get”, but I’m thinking I will use “fetch” with Keisha. It will also be a word that sounds a lot different than “give”. She will also learn to “find” things, but I think “find” and “fetch” also sound different enough to use and not confuse her. She love playing fetch and will bring her toys back to me, so it shouldn’t be too hard to teach her to do the same with other things.

It’s almost 3am and Julian will soon be calling me, so I guess I better go for now. I’ll write more about how Keisha is doing with the clothes and dryer later. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Christmas tree is up!

I put up the Christmas tree on Dec. 15th. I would have put it up earlier, but I was sick for 4 days! I’m feeling like a human being again now, but I spent over 3 days on the couch! Keisha was really well behaved when I was sick! She usually whines and howls if I’m out of the room for any length of time and she is in her crate, but I guess I madesomany trips to the bathroom she got tired of moaning about it! I don’t let her out of her crate while I’m not in the room with her because she is tall enough to get things off the table now, and I usually have my laptop there.


So far, Keisha hasn’t been too interested in the Christmas tree. She still dives at it every so often, but I think it’s mostly for attention. She’s also a lot better around Sophie now! She still wants to play with her, but when I call her she will come now. That’s really helpful! Now when she runs after Sophie I tell her to “come” and instead of nipping at Sophie first, she turns aroudn and comes running toward me!

We also had a snow storm on saturday and sunday! Keisha loves snow! She digs in it, leaps around and buries her nose in it. She even barks and howls when it’s snowing and she’s in her crate because she is suppose to be sleeping.

She’s sleeping in her crate right now, and Sophie’s sleeping on the couch. It’s nice when it’s this quiet here! It doesn’t happen very often since Keisha’s been here!

Saturday, December 8, 2007

A hyper puppy and a yellow lab.

I took this photo tonight. Sophie was relaxing in her chair, and Keisha decided to leap on top of her. Sophie just turned 10 on Nov. 3rd, and she was never a dog to play a lot. Sure she has her moments where she wants to play, but 10 minutes later she’s back to her calm, relaxed self. Keisha on the other hand is a little bundle of energy with pointy ears! She constantly has to be moving!


Keisha jumps all over Sophie and tries to bite her. She always wants to play, and don’t seem to understand that Sophie doesn’t want to. Sophie growls at her when she bugs her too much, and has even barked at her! She only ever barked a few times in the 8 years we’ve been together before Keisha joined us!

I’m hoping Keisha will learn to leave Sophie alone eventually. Until then I guess I just have to do my best to keep her from bothering Sophie too much!

Friday, December 7, 2007

Keisha broke a bowl

Keisha broke a bowl last night! I was in the bathroom and heard a crash. For a few seconds I thought she had somehow broke out of her crate! When I came out there was a broken bowl on the floor. It had been on top of her crate, and she managed to push it off the top. I had been keeping it there to put her water in. She tips over dog bowls too easily, and I can’t use the ones that have rubber on the bottoms that are harder to tip over because I have a latex allergy. I cleaned up the bowl, and vaccumed to make sure there were no small pieces of glass in the carpet, and I guess I’ll have to find somewhere else to keep her bowls from now on!


She’s sleeping in her crate now, and Sophie’s sleeping on the couch. It’s one of the rare moments when it’s quiet here! When Keisha’s awake she’s usually howling, talking, being hyper, or chasing her tail!

I’m not sure how I’m going to keep her from destroying the Christmas tree yet. I’m going to wait for awhile longer before putting it up, but I know she’s going to want to jump at it and eat it! I’ll let everyone know how it goes once the tree is up!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Fire alarms at 4am

At 4am this morning the fire alarms in the building started going off! I knew as soon as they started that the concierge was going to announce that there was an “alarm situation” on the 31st floor. These “alarm situations” always seem to happen there. They also happen a lot at really odd times when no one should be cooking.


This condo has three seperate speakers that the fire alarm sounds through. There is one in each bedroom, and another by the kitchen. There’s no way you would sleep through the alarm when it goes off! There is also a pad on the wall near the kitchen that you can press to silence the alarm. The problem is whenever the concierge makes an announcement to tell you what is happening during the alarm, it will go off again in your condo. I guess it’s good in case you fall back to sleep, but they announce things twice and it gets annoying shutting it off over and over.

This morning I didn’t turn it off. Keisha decided to howl the whole time the alarm was going off, which was for quite a while, and she was jumping around in her crate even after it had stopped. Sophie is use to it, so she just calmly waited to find out what we were going to do.
What annoys me most is the fact that it’s always on the same floor, and that there are only 8 condos on that floor! Chances are that it’s the same person causing the fire alarms to go off over and over!

Now that I’ve vented a bit I’m going to go try to get some sleep. it’s 6:39am and I’m so tired I’m getting a headache. Sophie’s sleeping in the chair and Keisha’s sleeping in her crate. I’m about to go join them and sleep on the couch. Hopefully there won’t be any more “alarm situations” today.

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Keisha's First Real Snowfall



It started snowing last night. Keisha spent most of the night in her crate watching the snow fall and howling at it. After midnight I had to close the curtains because she was making too much noise. She finally settled down andwent to sleep.

Today when we woke up there was snow up around the windows and as soon as Keisha saw it she wanted to go outside! I put some new batteries in my camera and got her and Sophie ready to go out. Luckily we have a pretty big patio area that they can run around on. I put Sophie on her FlexiLeash, and put Keishas harness on her. I had to adjust the belly strap because it was too tight! The last time she wore it was on Nov. 28th! She’s growing really fast. I used a longer training leash on Keisha so I could control her a bit. She likes to leap on Sophie and bite her, so I gave her a bit less leash than Sophie. They ran around and had some fun before Sophie wanted to come back inside. Keisha came in a little while later after she chased birds for bit and they both had a nap.

I thought I’d put the video I took on this blog entry instead of some of the pictures I took. I’ll be adding pictures throughout the winter. Enjoy the video!

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