Coda's Favorite Toy

[03-04-05]

Coda has this one toy that we bought before she came to live with us. It's a plastic ball on the end of a rope string ... this is her absolute favorite toy.

With this rope ball we play a rough game of tug!

For some reason he prefers playing with me ... not sure I know why, but when I'm eating dinner she likes to bring the toy to me ... she drops it at my feet and I have to play tug with her, using only my toes.

Puppybreak.com

We stumbled across this great site called puppybreak.com ... you HAVE TO visit this site. It's a site where people submit pictures of their puppies and then you can browse through them.

Our baby is on the site in six places (so far):

http://www.puppybreak.com/612
http://www.puppybreak.com/754
http://www.puppybreak.com/755
http://www.puppybreak.com/879
http://www.puppybreak.com/880
http://www.puppybreak.com/881

Enjoy her and the other puppies :)

Staying Home Alone

Lately we have been leaving Coda home alone ... and out of her kennel for a few hours at a time. This way she has the full reign of the living room and we don't have to feel bad about locking her up. We think she likes it this way ... plus we get the wonderful puppy greeting at the door and don't have to wait til we go upstairs to get it :)

So far the longest she's been alone has been 4 hours... we're working our way up to a full 8 hour day ... so far so good ... we'll keep you posted.

How small she was

[12-05-04] Our little angel at 7 weeks

Can you believe she was this small at one time?

Look ... she's the size of Brian's foot!

Anyway, I was brushing Coda last night and couldn't believe how much she had grown ... and that hair!! She has so much hair now.

This was one before we took her home. He cousins and siblings were all yapping at us because we were playing with her and not them. Most of them were much bigger than her already ... but that didn't stop her from taking care of one of her brothers when he tried to jump on her after we put her back in the pen!

More on going Leashless

Last night Bri and I had a little experiment. We let Coda go outside with us without a leash. While we gardened, she watched, everytime she tried to run down the driveway one of us would call her and run into the backyard ... she always followed. So for the rest of the night when we took her out back we went without the leash (and with a handful of cheerios). She always stayed with us and came back into the house with us!

It's good to know that she's not a runner and that she's going to stay close to home when we want her to.

Leashless

[5/8/05] - Coda and Brian running without a leash for the first time

Just last week we decided to see if Coda would stay with us if we took off the leash.

We went to the school yard at the end of our street (where we often go on weekends to run with Coda) and we took off her leash.

We took turns running back and forth with Coda and she stayed with us the whole time. She was having so much fun!

We try to do this at least once a weekend ... because it's great for her ... and for us cause she comes home and goes right to sleep :)

Coda & Sherlock

[1/30/05] - Coda and Sherlock after a long day of playing chase

For those of you who don't know, Sherlock is Mike's puppy ... and he's huge next to our little one.

The first time the two of them met, it was 2 hours of him chasing her around the house ending in the two of them napping together.

I think Coda thinks that's how it's supposed to be between the two of them now. Yesterday we spent the day at Mike's and Coda kept barking at Sherlock and then running away ... I think she wanted to play chase. She settled for sharing his humongous bone on the front lawn.

Coda and the Stairs

For a very long time, Coda was terrified of the stairs in our house. There are a couple of reasons that I can think of for that. The first, and most obvious, is that there are a lot of them--13, to be exact--and it can be a daunting task for an 11-pound puppy to go up all those stairs. The second reason is that we have hardwood floors, and this extends to the stairs. While it's great from a decor perspective, from a puppy's perspective it's a nightmare. She slides all over the place when she runs, and she spends as much time as possible on the carpet in the living room, or the rug in the bathroom. Now, add the 13 stairs, each of which is only slightly shorter than the puppy, herself, to the hardwood floors, and you have a recipe for a trip to the puppy emergency room. And Coda knew that.

Anyway, we found a solution. We went to Home Depot and bought some stair treads, which are basically just short strips of carpet. We put one on each stair, and we started working with Coda on going up and down the stairs. At first, as expected, it took a lot of coaxing to get her to even go near the stairs. Honey-Nut Cheerios helped a lot there. Also, lots of praise when she went up or down (whether or not we helped her) was key.

So, finally, she's almost to the point where the stairs aren't a big deal. She's going up and down them on her own (down more than up, because she likes being downstairs more than she likes being upstairs), though we still have to do a little bit of coaxing from time to time. She always gets really excited when she gets to the bottom, too, because she likes it when we make a big deal out of her accomplishments.

Brian

The day we met Coda for the first time

[10/16/04] - Coda 2 days old.

This was our little angel when we first met her. We didn't know at this time that she was going to be the puppy we'd take home, but isn't it great that it turned out that way.

The puppy I was given to hold kep squirming, and wouldn't stay in my hands, but this little bundle of joy fell right to sleep in Bri's hands.

Her mother was a real hyper-active dog. She was pretty young herself if I remember correctly. When Bri and I left that day we said we wouldn't want one of her puppies because they was so jumpy ... boy were we wrong ;)

Welcome to our Blog

You probably think it's a bit silly to have a blog devoted to our puppy ... or maybe you don't. Since I (Nicole) work as a web designer, I wanted to see what all of the blog fuss was about. I also have to start writing some blogs of my own for work so I thought I'd start here. I also wanted to be able to share our puppy pictures & stories with our friends and family.

We don't get to see a lot of you very often and I'd love for you to be able to check in once in a while and read about what Coda has been up to. You've missed a lot already. Coda will be 7 months old tomorrow ... but we can share some of the first pictures and stories with you all the same.

I should get started. So enjoy!!