Happy New Year!

Christmas was wonderful, but boy am I happy for it to be over. Tonight we'll be ringing in the New Year with good friends, but I thought I'd post some pictures from Christmas while I've got a few free minutes.

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Christmas Eve at Bret's Dad's house...

Christmas morning at home....

Mack, who continues to grow at an alarmingly fast pace. I took him in for his last round of boosters today and the vet says he's going to be a very big boy. I'm told that there is a dog that comes into the clinic that looked exactly like Mack as a puppy and that he's a German Shepherd/St. Bernard mix. He's also 130 pounds. Yes, I got a little light headed upon hearing this. Only time will tell, but he's already found a place into our hearts so we'll accept him whether he's Daisy sized or Monster sized.

Late Christmas morning we hit the road and made the drive to my mom's house to celebrate Christmas with my family.

Wiped out, Cubbies style!

Attention: Long Lost Blogger Found

It's been awhile. I realize that. Things have been so crazy around here since we got this puppy. It almost feels like we brought home an overly hyper and curious toddler last weekend. Things actually got pretty stressful around these parts.

Mack came home last weekend and by Monday morning he was running a 104 fever and very lethargic. I took him to (a very expensive) vet appointment to find out that his kennel cough had progressed into a secondary bacterial infection. He's been taking antibiotics (which are *so* fun to shove down his throat twice a day) and he seems to be almost over it. His cold like symptoms are still around but I think he's at the tail end of it.

Daisy got sick, too. The same day I took Mack to the vet I brought home some Nylabones for the dogs to chew on. Daisy chewed hers up into chunks and was throwing them up by 4:30am the following morning. We were getting pretty worried about her, praying that she didn't have a blockage. Two days of vomiting later, she had gotten over it.

Mack is doing awesome in the house training department. He's had no accidents in the house over the past 4 days and is the sweetest thing. Daisy seems to be tolerating him for the most part, but when Mack tries to initiate her in play, Daisy goes ballistic on him. We have no idea how to handle that. I know we have to let her assert herself as dominant dog, but my gut tells me that we should only be letting her "respond" to him to a certain aggressive level. We were given the number of a animal behaviorist when we adopted Mack and I'll be calling her tomorrow. Those times stress us out a lot and we really need to figure out how to deal with it if we want Mack to work out.

Last, but not least - we all have horrible head colds. For the last few days I've thought that maybe Ashley and I were fighting allergies, but Bret and Ryan both started getting the whole sneezing, head congestion, stuffy nose thing today. I'm hoping we're over it by Christmas later this week.

Three days until Christmas Eve. How the heck did that happen? It seemed like it was so far away and now all of a sudden it's about to be here and gone. The kids are starting to get really excited. We caved and opened up gifts between each other tonight which made the kids really happy to get a gift each ahead of Christmas.

Thankfully, we're ready for Christmas to come. We're anticipating that it may be a little sad and hard at times since this will be our first Christmas without Bret's mom, but we've worked hard to make sure it's a good one.

If I don't get back here before - Have a Merry, Merry Christmas!

Adjusting

Mack came home yesterday morning and things are going very well - busy, but well! Housetraining has been a lot easier than we had expected. He goes every time we take him outside. We found out instantly that he's a beggar the minute any kind of food came out. Funny how he automatically sits on his own when someone has food, but doesn't know how when you ask him to.

He's very playful, which Dasiy doesn't seem to be doing so well with. He constantly tries to engage her in play and her response is to growl at him. I may call the animal behaviorist number they gave us just to see how they recommend dealing with that. I'm not sure if we should let her deal with Mack on her own or if we should keep him away from Daisy. It seems to me that Daisy is trying to teach him manners, but Mack isn't get it.

Still top dog.

I was prepared for a rough night last night, but was nicely surprised that he let us sleep until 6:45am with no accidents. That's huge in my book!

Meet Mack

Meet the newest member of our family. We officially adopted Mack today. Tomorrow he will see the vet at PAWS to be ok'd for neutering. On Saturday morning, we'll pick him up and bring him home.

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Bret and I went and spent some time with him this afternoon. He's really a good little pup. He's already got quite the cute little personality. We took some pictures and video for Ashley, who still has yet to meet him. With volleyball practice and school going on right now, she's never home during their visiting hours. The excitement is really killing her.

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Upon spending almost and hour bonding with him today, we've come to the conclusion that he looks an awful lot like Daisy. It's almost like looking at a baby version of her. While I don't want him to get big too fast, I'm looking forward to seeing just how much he ends up looking like Daisy.

Puppy Update

We are super excited! The puppy is ours. I called the shelter just before they closed today to see if the first hold ever came in to adopt him. The lady said no one ever showed up and that he was ours to adopt now. We'll go in tomorrow to finalize the adoption, but it will be a day or two before little Mack can come home since he has to be neutered first.

Then the fun begins! We can predict that Daisy will probably be extremely jealous, but Mack is still small enough that she can assert herself as dominant dog. Our hope is that she will be a tremendous help in training him because she doesn't put up with crap from other dogs.

It's nice to have some time to get prepared for him, too. We've already been out shopping around for dog crates and other essentials. The fact that we don't have a puppy in our arms right this minute means we don't have to go out and spend a fortune in a hurry.

Now I've got a day or two to learn as much as I can about puppy training. Any suggestions?

Waiting Game

Since returning Luke to my aunt, we've been looking into adopting a new dog. We've made a few trips to the animal shelter and have come up with nothing...until now. Last night we put a hold on a 4 month old puppy and now we are waiting to find out if he'll be ours.

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There was already a 24 hour hold put on him by another person and they have until this afternoon to decide. We were told that holds are put on dogs all the time only to have no one come back and adopt them, so we took the fact that they didn't adopt him on the spot as a positive (and hopeful) sign.

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I've tried to stay calm and not get too excited, but he's just so stinking cute!

This may be the longest day of my life.