Rosie, Mocha, and Tippy

As you read yesterday, Junie B. was adopted.  Not even an hour after she left, I had a minor heart attack thinking I lost a dog.  See, I keep track of the dogs by counting them.  And for a couple weeks, if I had 5 dogs I was good.  Well yesterday I was sitting on the couch and I did a quick dog count, and only had 4.  It took me a good 30 seconds of thinking how long she was missing before I realized that it was Junie and she was with her new family.  Whew!  Crisis averted!

Prior to the adoption, I gave all the dogs some much needed baths.  Surprisingly, they all did pretty well!  Of course there were some initial jitters, but they calmed down pretty quickly.  Tippy was the star of the day, he didn't even seem to care that he was getting a bath.  Maybe he was just so scared he froze, but I think he was just indifferent to it.  Mocha finally let me clean some of the gunk out of his eyes.  That plus I gave him a trim earlier last week and he is looking so handsome! 

Friday I took Rosie, Tippy, and Junie to the vet for various things, so I decided to do a trial run of the dog room!  Mocha and Hardy got to spend about an hour in there while the rest of us were at the vet, and it went well.  So when I went to work in the afternoon, I put them all in there.  Again, it went very well.  Mocha and Hardy did manage to break out of the small dog area (I still haven't modified it as I mentioned last week).  But overall it looks good and I can't wait until it's warm enough to move them in there for good!

Car ride to the vet.  Tippy liked to hang out in the window bay.  Junie and Rosie preferred the actual seat.

Miss Rosie has developed cherry eye in her left eye.  It does not seem to have affected her personality at all.  She's still her bubbly self.  But I took her to the vet on Friday, and they prescribed an antibiotic for her.  Hopefully it works and clears it up, otherwise she will need to have surgery to fix it.  Other than that, she is doing wonderfully.  No accidents in the house for as long as I can remember, and she rings the bells whenever she wants to go outside.  She's also back into her crate without arguing.  I knew that was just a temporary lapse due to the introduction of a new dog (Tippy).

All the pups relaxing after a long day of play

 As I mentioned above, Mocha got a haircut this week.  Now you can see his beautiful eyes.  It's so cute when I call him in from outside and he comes running with his hair blowing back and his big eyes sparkling.  Mental note to take a video of that next time.  I've also started to trim the hairs on his belly (I've found with Hardy that belly hairs tend to tangle more quickly), and also around his paws.  Neither of those locations is as big of a deal with him as his face, but he does wiggle (just like Hardy when I try to trim him), so it still takes a bit of time.

Dog pile on me!  All 5 dogs are in this pic (Tippy and Junie disappear a bit in the sun spot).

Tippy is really coming out of his shell now.  This morning he and Rosie were chasing each other all around the house, and after a while Mocha joined in too.  I also saw him briefly pick up a stuffed animal and toss it around.  I'm so happy he's finally warming up.  He really is a great dog.  He's still sleeping in my bed at night, but we are making progress on crating him.  Last night he went all the way in his crate on his own, and I shut the door.  I had to run out of the room for something, so I left him in there while I was gone (~2 minutes), and he didn't whine at all.  But I could tell he was nervous, so I did let him out to sleep in my bed.  Baby steps!  Tippy's vet visit on Friday was to test for heartworm.  Good news...he's negative!

Doggy play time!  Junie, Tippy, and Mocha rough housing. (Those are not angry teeth on Tippy.)

Continued play time!  (Not angry teeth on Mocha.)

Even more playtime!

To end this post, some really good news!  The replacement belt for my carpet cleaner arrived!  I had no idea how much of a clean freak I was when I came to my carpets, but I've pretty much spent the last week cleaning them (and I have more planned for tonight).  I think it was almost 3 weeks without any cleaning, so I was definitely going through withdrawals.  I feel so much better now!

Junie B has been adopted!

You heard that right! My perfect little June Bug has found her forever home! I'm so happy for her and her new family. They seemed like such a great fit for her. She has a new big fur brother that she's going to have to learn to love, but I don't see that being a problem since she learned to love all these other pups in my house.

Rosie, Mocha, Junie B., and Tippy

I am nearly finished with the dog room.  I sewed all the curtains this past weekend and hung them up (temporarily just nailed to the walls until I can come up with a plan for long enough curtain rods that won't cost a fortune).  I'm going to add one brace to the divider, because as it is now the dogs can lean against the door and move it enough that it will swing open.  Not a huge deal since all the dogs get along now, but if I ever have a dog that needs to be separated, I don't want them to be able to interact without me being there to stop it.  It's supposed to get pretty cold this week, so I'm not going to move the dogs out there yet anyway.  So I'll make that one little change and maybe this weekend I'll move them out there and then take some pictures.

I took some video of our walks on Saturday.  I took Rosie, Mocha, and Junie out for the first walk.  It was a risk with three dogs, but they did wonderfully!  Junie got a bit tired about 2/3 into it, so I ended up carrying her for a bit.  Tippy and Hardy got the 2nd walk.  I don't know how often Tippy was walked before I got him, because he was initially not liking the leash.  But he quickly got used to it, and you can see in the video that he's a very good walker.

Rosie is doing really well.  She loves spending time outside with me when I'm out working.  I was fortifying the dog fence yesterday because I noticed in some places the dogs could have crawled under if they wanted to.  So I put up a baby gate to keep the dogs in the house, and Rosie jumped over to keep me company.  I figured she would, so I didn't mind.  She's not the one I worry about escaping anyway.  Especially under tiny holes in the fence.  The one negative with Rosie from the past couple weeks, is that she thinks since Tippy isn't crate trained, she doesn't have to be.  I know that's just coming from the change in pattern with a new dog.  She's already starting to get back into the habit, so I'm not concerned at all about this.  Plus when I move them into the dog room, I doubt this will even be an issue anymore.

Mocha is still as cute as ever.  He did meet a potential adopter this weekend, and we discovered that he still has a ways to go with getting comfortable with new people.  Here I've been praising how far he's come, when it looks like it's just that he's extremely comfortable with me.  So I'm going to need to introduce him to more people.  I have no doubts that he'll make a great pet for someone as is, but I have no problems working with him to make him a great pet for someone in the future.  He is my little cuddlebug, so I would certainly miss him if he did get adopted and left me! 

Junie B. is going to meet her potential family soon.  I still can't describe enough how wonderful she is.  There's not much more to say about her.

Tippy is starting to come out of his shell more and more every day.  I've let him sleep in my bed a couple nights, just to speed up the process of getting him comfortable with me, and I think it's helping.  He's playing with Rosie, Mocha, and Junie quite often.  He and Mocha act so much like brothers, it's funny.  One minute they'll be growling at each other, the next minute they'll be chasing each other around playing.  I also caught him pick up a couple toys to chew on.  He's still a bit of a loner, laying on the other side of the couch as me and the rest of the dogpile most of the time, but if I get up to get anything, he follows right behind.