"child" #9

It's been a long time coming, but we've added a new "child" to our house.

Well, not really a child, but she's all consuming as a child would be.

Her name is Roxy

We adopted her 3 weeks ago and she's already doubled in size.

When I say all consuming, I'm not joking.  I exercised at the gym this morning for the first time

in 3 weeks.  I guess we forgot what it was like to have a puppy.  But Roxy

is truly different from any other puppy we've ever had.

The biggest difference being that she uses her mouth (teeth) a lot and mostly on us.

I know puppy's chew, but because she is a shepherd mix, we were told that they are "mouthy" more than other dogs.

Of course we were told this after we adopted her.

It was too late.  The girls had fallen in love with her.

It only took us a few days to realize we were in trouble.  A fast growing big dog with a love of biting

needs some manners.  So we hired a trainer to help us get things under control.

We're happy to say that she is getting better (although you couldn't tell by the sores on my hands).

The trainer keeps telling us that the first 6 months are the worst.  If we keep working at it though, we'll be able to enjoy her all the time and not just when she's calm.

(Parallels? I was gonna say something sarcastic about raising kids but I'll pass and just let you come up with your own quip)

In the pictures below, the one on the left is at the pet store when we were adopting her.

The one on the right is just 3 weeks later.