special delivery

This weekend, the new camera lens I ordered online arrived. I missed the delivery, so they left it in our apartment office. After walking the dogs this morning, I picked it up, got back to our apartment, and within 60 seconds proceeded to open it up in an excited frenzy. Then I ran around taking head shots of my husband and dogs.

I think as an artist, it is completely possible to fall in love with something like blurriness in a photo. I am completely smitten.

A Perfect Day for a Walk Through Downtown

I was just looking through my stash of puppy pictures, and came across this picture of Roxie which was taken on the first day we brought her home. She's such a sweet dog. A little timid, we think in part as a result of her first few months. She and her litter mates were dumped in an overnight receiving bin at a dog shelter in New Mexico when they were barely 8 weeks old. If the owners thought abandoning a bunch of helpless puppies at a shelter during the night was appropriate, we speculate that the puppies didn't get a lot of nurturing in their first few months. The dogs at that particular shelter are actually kept outside in kennels made from chain link fences, and it really gets kind of cold at night in the New Mexico desert, so not great accomodations. The puppies were on death row in the shelter, so a rescue group from Denver drove down and literally saved their lives.

RIP Couch

We've been crate training Roxie, so during the day while we're at work, she's in her crate. We're looking forward to the day when we're confident that she's potty trained so we can let her hang out in our apartment while we're away. We've been slowly training her, having a handful of successful 2-3 hour adventures away from our apartment while the two dogs hang out by themselves in our living room. Each time we've returned, she's done really well.

Today, we left her out while we were at work all day. I walked in the apartment after work, and everything looked good upon first glance. Then I saw green stuff all over the floor.

Roxie had bitten a hole through the zipper on the bottom of our couch cushion and somehow "unzipped" the entire bottom of the cushion. Oh, and when I say "unzipped," I mean to say she bit two different tears into the zipper, so there's permanent damage and it can no longer be zipped up.



My first reaction was surprise. Next came sadness, at which time Koda started apologizing by licking my face and jumping up on me. Then I was even more sad, because I could tell that even though Roxie was guilty, he felt bad. He's pretty perceptive in knowing when us humans are upset in any way.

Next came the humor in the situation. Frankly, at least she was polite about it and the cushion is only messed up along the bottom side, and in a straight line. It could have been worse. It seems like everyone's puppy has to do something equivalent to this at least once in their puppyhood. Here's hoping Ro got it out of her system with the trashing of the couch today.



A bunch of hours had passed since discovering Roxie's damage, so I had the dogs pose for a picture. If we think this is humorous today, I imagine this memory will be even more funny as time passes.

Donut Head

Koda loves his new yellow toy we bought him last weekend.



Roxie's learning a lot from Koda, such as how to properly hold round things in your paws.



Sometimes Koda runs around the house with his new toy in his mouth like this. After several attempts to explain the danger of such endeavors, we've finally given up and have resorted to calling him donut-head. I'm surprised he hasn't run into a wall yet.

Attempt #1


Attempt #42

It's no small feat getting two energetic dogs to sit still and look at the camera for a photo.

What a week! We got the puppy on Saturday, Brandon injured his hand pretty seriously with a knife on Sunday, resulting in a trip to the emergency room and sitches, then he came down with an awful cold/flu-like thing that rendered him in bed for a few days. The first day the puppy was crated, she hopped out and ran wild in our apartment for 4 hours. When Brandon arrived home, it looked like a tornado had hit! Rugs from the living room had been pulled into the bedroom, toy box was overturned, our DVD player was knocked off our TV stand. Did I say she was calm and mild in my last blog? Just kidding! It turns out she must have just been scared and worn out. She's very much a wild little puppy who likes to eat shoes and bite your toes with her sharp little puppy teeth.

Koda wasn't so sure he liked this new little addition the first few days. As a matter of fact, he wouldn't look her way the first few days. Man, was he was mad at us!





After about 3-4 days together, we finally caught them playing together. We were so excited! They still both kind of do their own thing, but they've since found a mutal interest in chasing each other back and forth. He tries to keep her in line when she tries to steal his food, but he'll let her play with his toys now without that sad look he was giving us all the first day.


Dog wrestling!



On Wednesday night, I fell asleep around 8:30. I'm such a night owl, and this is a complete rarity for me. Apparently the pups were tired as well.

Brandon's recovering nicely, and was such an amazing support throughout those first few nights. In spite of him being sick, he came out every night in the middle of the night when the puppies needed to go out, just to make sure I was safe. When he was high on meds, he kept telling me how much he loved me- in spite of the crazy puppy messes, the fact that we said we were going to adopt an older dog, and in spite of the fact that he was going through so much this week.

After going through several name changes, we've finally decided on the name Roxie. I like to call her Roxie Hart.

The Cube Root of a Dog

Mom: Look at the size of that dog!
Four-year-old son: That's not a dog, it's a chihuahua!

--Washington Sq Park

Overheard by: Kerri

via Overheard in New York, Mar 19, 2007