She's Home!!

Hello everyone!!!

Sorry this post is so late. Its been hectic in my neck of the woods ever since the puppy has come home. Not to mention it has been quite an interesting adventure. She has been adjusting well to her new home and is starting to catch on to the whole concept of house training. To recap, here are some of the events that went down yesterday. That day I will always remember as puppy pick up day.

It felt like Christmas eve to me. I could hardly sleep the night before as my head was a mixture of emotions, some good and some bad. I was so worried about what the next 12 months would hold for me and I questioned myself over and over if I would be able to handle such a huge responsibility such as this. Its one of those situations that you truly have no idea what its all about until you tackle it and you get into it. Something told me, 'you may not be ready, but here we go'

The morning was a bit hectic. I did get up relatively early but between needing gasoline in my car and a few unexpected detours on the freeway, I was about a 1/2 hour late to pick up my new puppy from the Leader Dog campus. I arrived at about 1:36 (appointment time- 1 PM) and was greeted by Pat Boyd who is in charge of some of the operations in puppy development. After signing forms and receiving my backpack with "goodies" (aka the diaper bag if you will) I was FINALLY able to meet my brand new puppy. Daisy is beautiful and so are her parents [ for those of you who are Leader Dog raisers her parents are Callie (mom) and Tigger (dad)]. Upon holding her in my arms and looking into her brown eyes I realized that September 2nd, 2012 is going to be one of the hardest days of my life. With goodies in hand and puppy in arms, I headed back to the car with my mom and best friend Elle in tow and we headed home with my new puppy. She did wonderfully well on the car ride home and was eager and curious to know what each new object was and what did it do.

Arriving home we faced another challenge. In our home, we already have a well established male dog who has been ruling the roost on his own for about 12 years. His name is Rusty, a german shephard/keeshound/collie mix and he's my number one guy. My biggest worry: how was he going to react to a new puppy coming into the environment that he has called his for so many years. So with my sister holding Daisy and myself with Rusty on his leash, we gradually and carefully introduced the two to each other. They didn't do too bad and there wasn't any growling or snapping. Very proud of the both of them.

Moving onto the evening hours, Daisy settled into her crate nicely only crying for a few minutes but she was calm and sleepy for most of the night. I decided to awaken around 1:30 AM to check on her to make sure that she didn't need any additional potty time and when I walked to the basement and into the laundry room where her crate is located, I was greeted with a not so pleasant surprise. She had not only pooped in her crate but she had also vomitted a total of two times during the course of the night. With a heavy sigh I took Daisy out of her crate, out to the yard where she managed to potty, and then back into the house to clean up the 'situation'. About 45 mins to an hour later, she was back sound asleep, I was able to rest for another 5 hours peacefully.

The next post will be filled with some terminology to puppy raising as well as some helpful products that I have been using and highly recommend to anyone out there looking for a good product to use with their canine companion. More pictures in the next post and in many more to come!!

Meredith and Future Leader Dog Daisy