I can’t believe she’s so grown up already. Almost overnight she’s mellowed out so much. She’s never been super hyper but she definitely was testing boundaries for awhile. Typical teenage girl stuff. Hehe.

Yes I just called my dog a teenage girl. Shut up.

But she was a huge brat for awhile and I definitely did not consider finding a new home for her.

Ahem.

But now she’s becoming the amazing dog she was when we first got her. She is such a part of our family now, it feels wrong when she’s not around.

So, for her birthday I’ve given her a few too many treats, took her for a nice long walk in the beautiful kinda sorta spring like weather and we’ve snuggled on the couch for hours.

I’m pretty sure we both had a really good birthday.

Happy 2nd birthday, Phoebe.

Today I took her downstairs to potty and noticed it was actually really beautiful outside. The potty area, while not fenced in, is basically enclosed because it’s surrounded by buildings. I ran around with her a little bit but thought she might have more fun if I got some toys. We ran upstairs, grabbed a ball and a squeaky toy and went back down for what I anticipated would be a fun little game of fetch.

It started out just fine. I kept her lease on so that if she took off I’d have something to grab. I don’t want to jinx anything but so far she’s not the type to make a break for it. Also, if I tell her to stop? She does. Even I’m impressed. Anyway, this was the beginning

Aw! So cute and she seemed to be having a good time.

Very quickly though she seemed to forget the point of the game. I’d throw her ball or toy and she’d run like the wind for it, sniff and then….

Notice the toy way off in the distance? And she’d stand there looking at me like, “What are you going to throw now?”

Eventually it was just a game of throw the toy, run to the toy and…

“Oh look, a hole!”

I tried showing her how to run to the toy and pick it up. I’d squeak it and get her all excited only to throw it and have her completely lose interest. It was like she was thinking

“I just got that thing for you and you throw it away again?!”

So yeah, that whole movie image of a good game of catch with my dog? Not so much… Obviously she is in no part retriever.

More like papillon with a side of ADD.

Phoebe wants you to vote for us!

However, she’s not perfect and being 17 months old she’s going through a phase where she is constantly testing her boundaries. It drives me crazy. The thing about dogs is, it’s hard to correct behavior. If you wait a split second too long they have no idea what you’re correcting. Even if you don’t wait too long it’s always questionable if they have any idea what you’re talking about. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said “Why don’t you just speak English?!” to her.

Obviously I don’t expect perfection (ok maybe I kind of do) but when she acts like “come here” means let’s play a fun game of tag, barks at us for no reason or uses our legs as chew toys I get really frustrated. There’s just not much I can do. Obviously yelling at her won’t work because of the whole not speaking English thing. Everything I’ve read says that putting her in her kennel isn’t a good idea because that’s supposed to be her safe spot. We’ve tried just walking away and shutting her out but that also gets annoying when we have to do it every couple of minutes. Sometimes I think she wants to kick us out of the room.

There are times when she just needs a time out. Where to do it though? Not in her kennel because that’s not supposed to be used as a punishment. Not in any particular room because she always seems to find something to get into so I don’t think she’d view it as a punishment. Our little one bedroom apartment only offers so many options.

In a moment of desperation I stuck her in a confined area that we just happened to have laying around and surprisingly it worked! She easily could jump out but so far she doesn’t. When I went back and took her out she listened very nicely… at least for about five minutes. Trust me, at this point I’ll take what I can get.

Behold, our very own naughty spot.

Super Nanny would be so proud.

Miss Phoebe Lou

Here she is at about 5 weeks old.

When we went to the breeder (Country Pups in Durand, Il) to look at the litter there were four female puppies. One was already spoken for so we had our choice of the other three. They were of course adorable, as all puppies are, and we took them out of their box to play with them to see if we felt a special connection with any one of them. After awhile, one by one the puppies got sleepy and whined and scratched at their box to get back in. Except Phoebe that is. She crawled into Joel’s lap and curled up and fell asleep. Just like that we were both in love. So while we may like to think we chose her, I think it’s much more fair to say that she chose us.

At eight weeks we brought her home.

So tiny!

It’s a two hour drive from the breeder’s to where we live but she was a good little girl and didn’t even pee on me!

Here are a few highlights over the past few months.

Her first bath. She hated it, lol.

She seriously is the most cuddly puppy I’ve ever met.

She loves going for walks. She has finally stopped eating ev.ery.thing. in sight.

Look at that sweet face!

She’s now almost eight months old. I can’t believe how fast she’s grown and turned into this sweet little dog! She’s still super tiny, my best guess is she’s about 3 1/2 – 4 lbs. However, she’s not one of those obnoxious, yappy little dogs. In fact, she barely barks at all. Everyone who meets her loves her, even people who don’t like little dogs.

Her only fault is she’s not 100% reliably housebroken. I blame us for that since we tried to litter box train her at first. Yeah… she’s a dog… that was a bad idea. Anyway, at about 20 weeks we stopped that and are still retraining her. She’s pretty good about going outside but she’s not good at telling us she has to go out. *sigh* If anyone has any advise we’re more than open to it!

Other than that I couldn’t ask for a more loving, well behaved little baby dog. I’m sure you’ll be hearing more about her in the future since she goes with us anywhere she’s allowed. So now you’ve been introduced and I hope you grow to love her as much as we do. She’s our baby and we’re super lucky she chose us.