Good Morning

she really didn't want to get out of bed... too cold.

one more hoodie picture...

Her Hoodie Has Pockets

Aww

Update

Poochie in her hoodie
She needs some sweaters

So! Poochie met another one of my friends. I took her to my friend, Amanda's dorm at UMBC and this was where Poochie got to work on some of her territorial aggression. An officer actually approached us and we thought we were in trouble, only it turned out that he loves dogs and wanted to meet Poochie. Officer Stevens gave me some really great tips on training and offered to help me whenever I might need it! He also gave me a lot of help on controlling Poochie's barking and lunging towards strangers. Within a few minutes he had her silenced and ignoring the rest of the passing students. Amanda and I went to a shopping center and Poochie completely ignored the people who were passing by. It was great! It was nice to see someone with experience handle her and watch what they do. I mean.. I've been watching so many videos on training but none of it has helped because none of those trainers had any dogs with problematic behaviors. With any other puppy/dog I would've been more assertive than I had been with Poochie, but I was definitely weary about being too rough with her that I was actually getting nowhere with her aggression.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Today, she was still nuts towards my next door neighbors, but I was able to get her to bark at them less and less with more practice. Two houses across the street also have dogs that they let loose in their yards (invisible electric fence) and Poochie always went absolutely nuts whenever they were out because they too went nuts when she was in sight. But with a word and tug to distract her she kept her mouth shut and continued to walk with me. She even began to improve on the walking with a loosh leash.

My dad, on the other hand.. has poor reflexes, is stubborn (like I've mentioned before... ), and is actually a wuss when it comes to being assertive (unless he's angry at the person.. then he's unnecessarily loud)... so.. there's a lot, a LOT of work to be done on my dad. If only we had a local Korean Cesar Millan.. because my mom and I know he'll listen to that person more than any one of us.
So...
funny.. story..
My dad decided to try this assertion on Poochie and well.. my next door neighbors were out and she apparently went nuts and instead of doing what I told him to do, my dad decided to grab her by the collar to physically control her.. BUT.. his clumsy fingers unhooked her collar and away she went! I wasn't there but once I heard the commotion of two kids, two angry dogs, and Poochie's barking... I saw what had happened. Fortunately, she stopped at one point and my dad was able to grab her. Sigh... This isn't the first time she's gone loose in the hands of my father. I don't know what it is with him walking Poochie! The last time he just.. lost his grip on the leash or something and they were down and across the street. Fortunately, she ran to our backyard...

I mean.. seriously... he doesn't like to listen to either myself or my mom, so.. sigh... Yeah... Not much I can do with that.

"No, don't feed her that, you don't know what's in that and she'll get fat!" - chomp
"No, don't let her walk out the door before you" - does so anyway (after the 30th time we yell at him not to)
"No, don't do that just to see how she'd react. What are you insane?!" - has tried 3 things now... yeah.. now she's angry that one box... not going to get into it.
"No, don't say 'sit' or 'no' like that and so many times in a row" - "sit.. sit.. sit.. sit.. sit.." "no. no. no. *tug* no. no."

I .. sigh. Too bad he's stubborn and i'm extremely impatient with him. Too bad I'm not allowed to yell at him because he's an elder, a father, a man, therefore above me. That's ok. I love him. It's all good. I'm sure.. Poochie will be smart enough not to let my dad's forgetfulness and stubbornness and the occasional stupidity to ruin her training... One can only hope.

Creature Comforts!

If you guys haven't seen Creature Comforts, do check it out!
I've only seen seasons one and two. One is really cute and heartwarming, whereas the second season isn't nearly as cute or funny... It's still worth checking out :)
I haven't seen what they show on Animal Planet because we don't have cable, so.... I don't know what to tell you about that. It's especially to die for when younger animals are talking. Adorable.

Update

Sooooo a bulky update on Poochie's progress.

• Well.. her spunky, silly personality is really starting to shine.
• She is extremely territorial of me, my parents, and our house. (We're working on that with little progress, so far)
• Still working on the loose leash walking, but she's very quick to learn with that. It's the lunging and barking at passersby that dirties up the pretty picture. Working on that, as well.
• She loves her Bobo more than ever. A few days ago, she started to just run around the house with her red Bobo. When she's bored and lazy, she chews on the tabby cat.
• Funny thing about the playfulness... she starts to do this the day after I post Poochie's story and a bit on her lack of interest in toys and playfulness on some Yahoo! forum thing. This seems to happen to me quite a lot.
• She has started to play around with the blanket in her crate more. She tugs at it and pulls on it to get it the way she wants it. Honestly, it never ever looks comfortable when she's done :/ I can't wait till she figures out how to just.. get under it and.. bury herself in lovable warmth.
• My dad makes it much much harder to train her since he's extremely, even 100% stubborn. I tell him to do things a certain way so as to keep it consistent and so we have a routine for her to adhere to and learn from.... but no.. Not going to get into that. My family has a history of high blood pressure... don't want that on my case.
• Poochie is still learning to "come". Scenario: I tell her to come so as to give her a treat. 1 time out of 5, she does around the corner, pops her head in... and from there she either goes all the way or turns back around and into her sanctuary of a crate. When she does go all the way... she stops a few feet from me.. sits down and expects ME to walk up to her with the treat. Yeah..... brat. Brat, brat, brat. She isn't such a brat if I say, "Outside!" Then, she'll run over, no.. HOPS over to me and sits all nice and pretty waiting for me to put the leash on her. Brat, brat, brat :)
• Cannot wait to take her to obedience training. Don't know where to take her though... Would a place like Petco/Petsmart be good enough for her? I donno... If I did go with either of them, I think I'd go with Petsmart. Their employees are much friendlier and better informed. Petco people are.. cooooold. Never have I ever been approached by an employee asking if I needed help. What store DOESN'T have that?? Petsmart: they don't leave you alone. Granted, I don't like it when they don't leave me alone, but... once or twice is better than none. At Petco, I never feel good... I never did feel good at any Petco I'd ever been to. Petsmart employees are always friendly and there seems to be an abundance of them.... Anyway, going off on a tangent here. Moving on~
• Poochie is starting to learn "Kennel" "go to your kennel". I store the term "kennel" from the video I recently posted. I'm sorry, the video is happy and the word just .. stuck. Anyway, I mean "kennel" is really easy considering she loves going into her crate. A lot of times, we have a lot of trouble getting her to come out.. I hope that's not a sign of anything bad, behaviorally. I really hope that she just genuinely want snuggle up in her blanket... Like I've already mentioned, our house isn't all that fun... I mean.. I hate walking, sitting, laying on our floors. Even our furniture isn't that great... I just want a used couch that sinks in and just.. hugs you. You know? Fabric, too. The leather couches are just not welcoming. Again.. moving on....
• Poochie is still extremely territorial, but she's gotten a whole lot better about barking at my parents. When the door opens and the alarm does the "beep, beep (door opened~)" sound, Poochie barks and runs over to the door to see what/who it is. As soon as she notices that it's one of us, she's fine and either stays and watches us/them or she runs back to her crate. Before, she used to scream, then scream the entire way to the door, then continue to scream even after seeing that it's only my parents. (WIth me, she always stopped as soon as she noticed it was me. Rather, if we had been home alone and I left to run an errand, then returned... she never made a sound at the beep, beep of the door).
• As calm and lazy as she is... she still has a good few number of moments where she unintentionally does something to make me laugh out-loud. There's this one thing she does, quite often... sometimes when I'm moving around the house and I'm walking towards her bed, she hops over to it and plops down.. and if I bend down to pet her, she rolls over to expose her belly and... this is when she overcalculates the size of her bed and roll right on out of her bed :). There was this other time, this past Sunday, where she... snorted SOMETHING.. we don't know.. must've been too much dust in that one spot near her bed.. BUT.. she started to have a sneezing fit and literally, literally sneezed about 13 times or more. Iiiiiii had quite the laughing fit that day. I laughed and laughed until I cried. Yes, until I teared up, but even until I literally started to cry. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that. I regretted that I didn't get any of it on camera. I did get a bit of camera action afterwards, when she went into her crate... She cringed a few times and spazzed out, about to sneeze again. She never did.. but almost! I want to show that clip.. but I'm kind of ashamed of the past two, extremely boring videos.. Don't want to torture you guys.
  

That's all for now. It's late. It's 6am. Way too late. :/ I wish I had slept...

Wakey

I absolutely love it when dogs wake up and their heads wobble from the sleepy

Dingos

Poochie also loves the infamous Dingos
I gave her one of these for the first time yesterday and she ran around the entire house hiding it, retrieving it, then hiding it again, then she finally took it to her crate and ate it there.

Random 9.13.2008

Awwww

Aww

I go run an errand and this is what I come home to. Seriously.