10/10/13:

Zoey is doing great! She and Bo are finally getting along. He still growls at her every once in a while, but then she just sits on him and they both curl up and take a nap! She loves him and is always trying to be his best friend. She's still not quite big enough to keep up with Bo and Gus when they're running around the yard, but she gives it a good effort and they try to be good big brothers and include her. ;-) She's getting tall, but having a hard time keeping weight on. She just burns it off so fast! And she has a really strange aversion to walking across different textured floors, like where it goes from tile to carpet and back to tile in the hallway at school, or walking down the beer cooler aisle at the grocery store....lol

We've had some setbacks in our goals of training her to be a therapy dog. I was hoping I would be able to have her with me at school from the beginning, but found out she has to be certified first. Our trainer does the classes, but we weren't able to afford the session that started last month, and then I found out that I have to have surgery in November, with a 6 week recovery, so we decided to hold off until after the first of the year. So, hopefully she will get to be my school buddy by early spring. :-)

She is such a love and we are so happy to have her! I took her to school everyday during the summer for summer reading, and have been able to take her a couple times since school started and she has done so good with the kids. The only time she had any trouble was during the back to school assembly. She walked out across the hardwood floor (I was so proud), and sat down next to me while I introduced her and talked about what a reading dog does. She actually laid down at one point. Then 420 kids clapped...lol She bolted for one of the other teachers and hid in his lap until the end of the assembly! We will obviously need to work on that. After the assembly she sat nicely while all the kids pet her.

I'm attaching some newer pictures. She's getting so big! The first is Zoey and Gus, Zoey watching Scrubs with my husband, sleeping on me, and last, begging for bites while my niece feeds her sister. You can really see how big she's gotten.

8/10/13:

Zoey is doing great. She is growing so fast! She's gained almost 10 lbs since we brought her home. There have been a few rough patches that we weren't expecting. We figured if there were any problems getting along it would be from our boxer Gus, since he is the alpha, and he and Bo can get to playing pretty rough. Bo is usually very submissive and mild mannered.

Zoey and Gus have become best friends. They play together and even when they are wrestling and rough housing, Gus is very gentle with her. He mouths her and totally slobbers all over her, but never bites her. He lets her bite his cheeks and his legs and steal his chew toys. She just walks up to him and takes his bone out of his paws and starts chewing on it in front of him! And he HAS to sleep in the bedroom with us. One night my boys decided they wanted him to sleep in their room, and Zoey cried all night. So Gus is completely her buddy!

Bo on the other hand, won't play with her and barely tolerates her playing with him. He usually just ignores her, but a couple times he has "hit"her. He never drew blood, and he didn't bite, but he smacked her with his teeth and has given her a couple bruises. This morning he hit her and her lip swelled up. I'm kind of not sure what to do or how to prevent it from happening again. The first time we thought it was bc she was sniffing at his bowl, although it was empty, we were all just standing in the kitchen, and maybe he thought it was time to eat. Today there was no food involved and nothing was even going on. They were both standing by me, and she may have bumped into him. The only thing I can think of is that he feels like his position in the family is threatened, and he's just making sure she understands the pecking order, since they are both submissive. Both times I have yelled at him and sent him to bed (he likes his crate and goes on his own when he does something wrong, even if we don't tell him to), but I don't know if that was the right thing to do. It was just instinctive. What do you think? How should we handle the situation if he does it again?

(SHELTER NOTE: So far, this sounds like normal adult dog behavior toward a pup, teaching the pup limits... if it stays minor, then these are just normal "corrections" and should not be disciplined, other than possibly distracting/removing the pup if she is being overly and stubbornly obnoxious)

Other than that, everything's been going well. We take her everywhere with us, and she's getting used to being at my school and meeting some of the kids during the summer program. We'll see how she does once school is officially back in session and she has 400 kids that want to meet her! Oh, and she HATES swimming...lol She likes to get her feet wet, but she acts like we're killing her when we take her out in the water. You win some, you lose some.... ;-)

I attached a few pictures of her last couple weeks. Zoey, Bo, and Gus and my youngest, Cody, and Zoey and my 1 year old niece Khalessi trying to steal popcorn from Cody. She and Zoey played together all day and then both passed out on top of me for an afternoon nap! One of her first time swimming, and the dirty looks she gave him the rest of the evening, and the last one is her wanting to play with the big dogs so bad!!! but she's just still not quite big enough to keep up, so she runs with them as long as she can, and then she sits and waits for them to come back, and then she starts running before they get to her so she can run with them for a min, and then they pass her so she sits and waits for them to come back again. They're all gonna be in for a big shock when she finally outruns them here in the next couple months!

7/24/13:

It was pretty late by the time we got home, so we did introductions with our lab Bo, which went great! He loves her, although he drools like crazy and we have to keep wiping his face. They've been playing a little already.

She slept awesome, although I didn't. ;-) She definitely likes to snuggle. She had to be touching me somehow all night. Sometimes just a paw on the shoulder, sometimes a full on burrow into my neck! She's just so sweet!

She's so well behaved. We sat outside of taco del mar and had some dinner after Kim left. She sat on my lap and sniffed at my burrito a couple times and when I told her no, she didn't even look at it again. Since we've been home, she's started to chew on a few things (my son's shoe, a little rubber dinosaur, a wooden chair) and as soon as I say no, she immediately stops. I'm sure at some point she will be naughty, but I'm totally amazed.

The only problem I'm having is getting her to potty. She's been drinking, but she's only peed twice since 5 o'clock yesterday. Is there some trick to this? I'm used to puppies peeing often.

We absolutely LOVE her! Thank you so much!! I will send pictures when she does something more interesting than sleep... ;-)