20090821

Puppy Capers, Puppy Updates

Two happy dogs.

Life with two dogs can be a pain sometimes. Penelope is (for the most part) a good dog. But she is a puppy. She was a street dog. She is not as submissive as Lily is. Lily would be a perfect dog were it not for her ability to get out of our yard.

When we leave the house, I crate the dogs . I don't want Lily to get out. When we get ready to go, I tell her "crate", and she gladly runs upstairs to her crate. She really seems to like it. I don't like having to leave her in there for more than 4 hours, so we haven't been taking too many long trips. Penelope doesn't mind the crate either. If I know we will be gone more than 4 hours, I put her outside. She is still a puppy and as such her bladder control is not 100%.

Speaking of bladder control, she rarely has accidents in the house. The last few have been because we didn't let her out, even though she was sitting right by the back door. She doesn't scratch at the door like Lily does. I am trying to teach her to ring some bells I have hung on the back door instead of scratching like Lily does. I am hoping both dogs will start ringing the bells.

The biggest issue we have with Penelope is that she was once a street dog. She may have had to fight for her life, and because of that, she is aggressive about food. She will share with Lily, sometimes but sometimes she growls at her. She will not share her rawhide chew. She will try to get food off of the counter, and will eat pretty much anything.

She knocked my curry off the counter and proceeded to lick up every last piece of rice.

Penelope is basically the same size as Lily now. Maybe a little smaller, but she may grow yet. She runs like a dopey dog, I have sound effects I make in my head when she is running by me. (Doh doh doh duh doh doh doh.) I can't seem to get a picture of the dopiness that is her. The below picture sort of shows it.


She is a puppy, there is no doubt about that. She chews a lot. She has destroyed two bras of mine. Why my bras I have to wonder. But really its about all she has destroyed, unlike Lily who killed two trees and chewed up the carpet on our bottom step. If you ever come to our house, its about the first thing you see if you look down, so very nice, eh? I am sure there are a few other things that Lily destroyed, but I can't recall. Penelope likes to chew on toys, but she doesn't tear them to shreds in moments like Lily did, she is a little more delicate about her destruction. She will carry shoes around if she gets them, but doesn't seem to want to chew on them much. She prefers her rawhide to chew on, and those? She will tear up in no time at all.

We are sad because her cute little spotty nose has turned almost all black (see above pictures). It was so unique when it was mottled. She still has on her goth lipstick and her Clockwork orange eye make-up. But we love her, and hope that when Will comes home, he does, too.

2 comments:

bodaat said...

Very cute pics! We have to feed our dogs separately in different rooms (with a closed door) as Taz is very food aggressive as well. They recently got in to a bad fight (Taz lost some skin!) so I hear you on that. And then Shila is our constant stealth grazer. She licks at our floors for food and grabs things off kitchen counters all the time. The two of them are quite the pair but like you, we LOVE them both so much!!

leaner said...

Penelope is not that food aggressive, thankfully. She actually shared a container of old raost with Lily, their two snouts in the one bowl. I have high hopes that she will get over any aggressions she has.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...