A house is not a home without a pet.

Kossuth Animal Rescue

Embarcaderra (Emmy)

Hi, I'm sending you some pictures of Emmy (short for Embarcaderra) in her new home.  Emmy turned 8 weeks old today and she's been a great addition to our little family of ferrets, turtles, and people.  She is an extremely social dog and loves meeting new people.  Emmy is very friendly with every person and animal she meets, like cats, other dogs,

August 8, 2008

and even a pet skunk.  She and the ferrets get along fairly well.  One is slightly scared of her, one has some territory issues with her, and the other just loves to play with her.  All three of them will approach her playfully when they're in the right mood, and Emmy treats them all very gently, chasing them but never biting them. It's a lot of fun to watch.  When she gets more comfortable around them, we plan on teaching her not to pounce on them so they don't get hurt when she's older.

Her housebreaking is going well for the most part.  She has good days and bad days, but she always goes potty when we take her outside.  Most days, she only has one or two accidents, which is very small compared to the number of times she asks to go outside to go potty each day.  Emmy quickly learned how to go on walks, but also loves to ride in the car.  She doesn't like any sort of warm weather, and will whine until we put the air conditioner on, at which time she lies on the floor under the air vent--even if it's very nice weather.  

Finally, Emmy learned to swim a few days ago.  She's not all that excited about it yet, but she's beginning to get used to it, especially when it's hot outside.

I'm enclosing several pictures, including Emmy's swimming lessons, her helping out with weeding the garden, front yard playtime, ferret playtime, and one other picture that belongs on a bag of puppy food or fabric softener or something just because it's so cute.  I hope you put them to good use.  Thanks again for brining Emmy into our lives.  She's such a wonderful dog....when she's not chewing on shoes :) Click here to view more pictures of Emmy!

Rebecca and I thought we'd email you with a new picture of Emmy.  She's getting huge and....well, amazing.  Emmy's a super good dog.  She gets along well with the ferrets, loves to go swimming, and even takes baths without complaint.  (Although the last bath she took, she got bored and yawned)  She just turned 3 months old about a week ago, and she's down to just a few accidents a week.  For a 3 month old puppy, she's

August 8, 2008

extremely obedient, and generally comes we call her, fetches when there aren't other distractions, and is getting better about not jumping up on people.

One thing that has impressed me the most with Emmy is how well she gets over her fear of new situations.  Several times we've had to literally push her into something new, such as the Skunk River or just down a playground slide, and she quickly realizes how much fun these new things can be.  It wasn't long ago that she was terrified of a tiny children's slide in a park, but now she'll go town the large twisty slides without hesitation.  One of her favorite things to do is go to the Ledges State Park and run around on the trails and play in the river, chasing frogs, grasshoppers, and leaves.  Even more than frogs and water, she loves meeting the new people and new animals.  It's about a half hour drive there each way, and she loves to sit on our laps and put her nose against the window.  On the way back, however, muddy puppies have to sit in the back of the Honda Element.  (It's fitting that my justification for getting an Element a year ago was that someday I'd be able to use it for transporting muddy puppies.)

We'll send you some more pictures soon.