tsk tsk tsk

So, another fail grade for the blog upkeep. Oh well, what can I say? I have never been one to maintain any kind of hobby on a consistent basis.
Hugues, or oog, or oogie, or wegway or weggie(my favourite) is getting a lot larger now. She still has an incredible amount of jam for brains, and Josh and I are trying to fix this issue.

Hugues is learning the sits and lie downs etc... in our apartment, but when we take her outside it is like she has completely forgotten what "sit" means. However I read something in one of my books as to how to try and change this, so I suppose I will be trying it next time we go for a walk.

This past weekend we took Hugues to Josh's cabin out on Baynes lake( 25 minutes from Fernie). We had a great time. She enjoyed playing in the grass, ripping up clumps of it as if she had been transformed into a small bovine.
She also enjoyed playing games with Jacen, and "helping" Chris with the wheelbarrow.










We also ensured to have the appropriate Weggie sacrifice over the unlit firepit.

So, the weekend was a great success, and Hugues got lots and lots of socialisation and playtime with my friends.









Onto more socialialising, today Hugues got to meet a nice big malamute called Noa. Noa belongs to my best friend Anne's brother, Michael.
It was love at first sight, lots of fun playing, even more slobbers all over poor Weggie's face. Not that she wasn't encouraging it though.
They had a grand old time with another dog too, I think it's name was Darby or something similar.
Once Noa and Hugues got to the park by the Lougheed house they had about a half an hour of more playtime. Or rather, Hugues stuffed her head inside Noa's mouth and got slobbered on.
There was also this hilarious game play where Michael and Noa slowly jog across the field and Hugues tries to catch up with them.
Michael and Noa=1...Hugues =0

Playtime with Noa was a great success, and aside from the fact that she really really needed a bath afterwards, we all had a great time. I cannot wait for them to get to play with each other in Mike's backyard.


I still hate this blog format, and while it is une piece de merde, i will attempt to update more
*i promise*
haha

OH DEAR

well, my attempts to keep up with posting have failed miserably. I would like to blame it on my inability to arrange a proper, esthetically pleasing layout. I am currently in Halifax and cannot post any photos of Hugues, but I will do my best upon my return to Calgary.

The last couple of weeks have gone by very quickly, of course there is a fair amount of annoying "puppy behaviour" to contend with. But for the most part things are going quite smoothly.
I am very anxious to get her next set of shots done so we can hopefully take her outside. I want her to be trained to be able to go to the bathroom outdoors, not just inside on her newspaper/tray thing. The downside to living in an urban apartment is we do not have a safe, uncontaminated backyard in which to start the outdoor training. That is ok though, we will be able to do that soon enough, and hopefully the weather will improve since gale force winds and freezing rain are not good "potty motivators" for a little puppy.

We started puppy classes last thursday. First it was puppy play time, it took Hugues about 5 minutes to stop being shy and then she was bouncing all over the place having a good time. When we got home we gave her a bath. Which she seemed to tolerate pretty well.
This last saturday was the first bright puppy class where we get started on the basic training. Unfortunately she didn't seem to care about the treats we were using, so getting her to respond to the clicker was futile. Slightly frustrating to have the only puppy that could care less about a treat. Although, considering there were only two other puppies i don't feel too bad. So we are just trying to practise at home a bit and see what treats motivate her. Little tiny bits of hot dog definitely motivate her, even though it is kind of gross. So we will be working with that, and also i mixed up some old cheddar with some of her kibble, so we can use the "smelly kibble" for training and she wont get too rotund by the time she grasps anything.

Leash training is another learning curve. Hugues mostly just wants to eat the leash, so i am going to pick up some bitter apple, and continue with letting her wear the leash loose on the floor, but distracting her with training and treats so she forgets that she wants to eat it.

It is a lot of work, we are definitely going to be busy this summer, but she is SO cute, and likes to have nap time with either of us. I never thought i'd be ok with sharing a dog-nap, but since she is so cute and will sleep for an hour of two on the couch with us, i will let it slide.

dimanche avec le chien

All saturday evening I kept waking up, worried that Hugues might need to be let out of her crate for peetime. However, every time I went to check on her, she was fast asleep. In retrospect I should have made her get up, because by the time Josh and I woke up after 6:30, she had peed in her crate a bit.

Puppies essentially follow this pattern, playtime, pee and/or poo time, drink and/or food time, naptime!
lather, rinse, and repeat in no particular order.

We were trying to get her to figure out some commands, but apparently "sit" is all she could figure out at that time. On the other hand, if she was distracted or excited, getting her to sit was futile.
So, we'll just persist with the training.

The rest of sunday was pretty uneventful, we ensured to tucker her out before bedtime by playing with the red bouncy ball. Hugues is very stoked on the red bouncy ball. So much so, that she will pounce across the room like a little bunny trying to get it. It is almost an overload of cuteness.

So, at least getting her to go to bed hasn't been too much of an issue. As long as she is very tuckered out, and we turn all the lights off, giving her a couple of well-stuffed kongs to chew if she wakes up, all works out pretty well.

Oh right, there are two photos of Josh putting her in what we call "the puppy cage" ie. underneath one of us making a bridge. Well, she doesn't like it, it's funny.

Now if only I could convince her to wake up after 6am......

-also, still haven't figured out this editing/ format thing, but it is definitely pissing me off....apparently the "preview" is a fallacy, and it just posts however it wants after you hit "publish"

hugues comes home

Well, it has taken me a few days to start composing some entries.... I've been busy, to put it lightly.

I thought I had a pretty good idea of how annoying puppies would be, and I was right. However, my brain also tricked me into thinking I would be able to figure it all out by day 2. Wrong.

Anyway, on saturday Josh and I drove up to the Edmonton airport to meet up with the breeder. She was dropping off Hugues' sister to go to Prince George, so it was nice that she didn't have to go back to their house all by herself.

The drive itself was not very eventful. She just sat on my lap in her little soft carry-case, and I kept my hand inside to keep her calm. What was more amusing was the fact that Josh and I pulled over a few times to try and get her to pee.... Of course she wasn't going to go.... she was too scared. It just meant that she ended up peeing a bit in her carry case. Not a big deal considering the scary factor of Red Deer walmart highway pitstops.

Before we came to our apartment we had to drop of my father-in-law's vehicle. It was better on gas, so we borrowed it. This also provided Hugues with a backyard to play in for a bit. His parents don't own a dog, so it was safe. Josh and Don, and I sat around letting Hugues explore for a while, waiting for his mom and aunties to get home. Poor Hugues. I tried to give her a pep talk for the impending coddling, but to no avail. She was definitely a baby for about 15 minutes while the aunties all took turns holding her, and baby talking her. A little frightening look into the future for when we have children.

Having been gone from our apartment for about 9 hours, we decided it was high time we went home to try and get her settled in. We came in, set her case down and tried to coax her into the kitchen.... In hindsight we should have just pulled her out and put her on the newspapers, because she peed in her crate mere feet from her litter area. Oh well, we learned that the hard way.

She adjusted pretty well off the bat. Hugues decided to explore her permanent crate on her own. I ensured to stuff some kong chew toys, but she has yet to muster up an extreme amount of excitement over them. I'm trying to only feed her kibble out of the chew toys, so she is not too bored during the day. If she develops a strong liking for the kongs, and will eat out of them, then I don't have to worry that she isn't eating enough.

With the excitement of the ride home, and the fact that Becky and Chris came over around 21:30 to visit, Hugues was definitely tired.

I put a few more biscuits in one of the kongs, and we put her in her crate for the night. She slept through until about 6:30, even though I checked up on her to see if she needed to be let out to pee. No dice, no pee until she got up on sunday and I saw she had peed on her blanket a bit.

sunday's extravaganza to be posted sometime today. I will catch up, I promise.

-as a side note, I also have no clue how to format these damn entries. Bear with me, I'll mess around with it tonight

les aventures avec notre chien

I've had this blog for over three years, but the posts were all nonsense. So I deleted them and am starting a new blog.
Ah yes, yet another attempt at something in the public blog-o-sphere. However, now I will actually have something to blog about.
On May 15 Josh and I will be bringing home our puppy, Hugues. So I will be documenting the life of Hugues. I shall update with training successes(hopefully more than failures) and all sorts of cute puppy photos. As both Josh, and myself will be first-time dog owners there will likely be a bit of a learning curve, however, I think I have prepared myself as much as possible, and I cannot wait for us to get our puppy.

For post number 1 I will enlighten everyone with some pictures of Hugues that we have received so far:
In the first one she is about 5 weeks old and still has cute floppy ears.
In the second and third photos, she is 6 weeks old and her ears have popped up!
We received the latest photos this week, she is 7 weeks old and super adorable. I cannot wait!