Spring is here, as evidenced by the beautiful flowers! We have thousands of these lovelies in our yard!
Something else that grows fast. These were our pups on April 8th. Sandy was somewhere between 7-8 lbs. (We didn't get him weighed the day this was taken, but he was 8 lbs a week later.)
This is what we had on Thursday. We visited the vet the next day, and he was 11.22 lbs.
When the play moves indoors, it sometimes changes the feel of our decor. This is a little more casual than we intended. (The bits of mud from the backyard on the quilt are a nice touch.)
He has begun to "mark" our route when we go for walks. When I come home from being out, he wants to jump on me, of course, and bite me, but I praise Dusty for "good down" and "good no bites" and ignore Sandy. When he starts behaving the way I want, I praise him, too. Sometimes he challenges Dusty for the right to have a toy or a chewy, or Dusty gets after him for doing something he isn't supposed to do. They have an altercation. If it gets too serious (in my opinion), I tell them to knock it off. They do, usually within a few seconds. Sometimes they make up by kissing each other.
That was a very important visit to the vet! Sandy got the final dose of the vaccine in the series that should make him immune to Parvo (after a week or so for it to take effect). That means we will soon be able to go out on the trails with him. It means he can take a puppy training class. It means we won't have to take our shoes off at the door and sanitize the pups' paws anymore! We have an appointment to see the vet again when Sandy is six months old to evaluate the location of his potential dangly bits that will need to be surgically removed. It would be nice if our vet didn't have to dig around in there to find them. Our other males have been neutered at five months with no problem, but this line of dogs likes to hold them back much longer.
We haven't had any more "accidents" since we put up Dusty's old wire puppy play yard in front of the stairs. Sandy got the message quickly that it was against our cultural traditions to potty in the living area of the house, but he didn't seem to realize that the upstairs hall was living area. This is working well.
One thing I really like about this pup is that he prefers to leave his poopies around the very edges of the backyard, instead of out in the middle. I pick them up if I'm with him, because it's easier to find them. While I have a bag open, I look around for any others I might have missed. It's getting harder to see them, now that the grass is finally growing again.
Sandy has become quite comfortable with letting himself out through the dog door to potty, to play or just to check things out. Sometimes he takes a a toy or a friend with him. His friends need help getting through the door.
Snowball has been through the dog door (with help, of course), but it's a struggle. Snowball is pretty big. It's easy to help him out of the playpen, though.
Sandy hasn't figured out how to get Dusty through the dog door. That problem falls to me to solve. I have to either hold the flap up for him or open the door. They have a lot of fun playing in the backyard, once they're both out there. I prefer they not play with sticks, so I've been removing them and substituting a rope tug, but Sandy doesn't seem to be eating the vegetation, other than a little grass. When he chews things, he spits out any pieces that come loose, so I don't worry too much.
Dusty seems to have let up a bit on his obsession with having a ball thrown. He's happy to chase the ball or a toy if we throw it, but he really seems to enjoy Sandy's games of tug, chase, roll around on the ground and try to rip the other dog's throat out, etc.
He has a bit of a rebel in him. He took a chew toy out to the backyard the other day. I went, got it away from him and brought it inside, leaving my backyard shoes by the back door. I left the chew toy in the playpen and came back to find this.
It's good this one is here, but I needed two. He had the other one outside. I got the message. He thinks I took something of his, so he took something of mine. You don't get something back by chasing him, though. That's how his game is played. You have to pretend you don't care and start playing with something else. Dusty is very useful at helping with this. When Sandy took the dog comb out into the backyard, Dusty and I played alternately with the Frisbee and a toy, throwing and chasing, and totally ignoring Sandy. Soon Sandy dropped the comb and went after the toy. I snatched up the comb but kept up the game, so maybe Sandy doesn't catch on to my ploy.
Sandy is beginning to behave a bit like an older dog. He spends less time in the playpen now. I don't have to enforce "quiet time" after breakfast anymore. The other day, he sat for nearly a half hour, just watching the birds.
Sandy is getting very shaggy. Dusty needs a haircut, too. That's happening today. Sandy won't look like this anymore.
One of my online friends likes to color. She made this for me in honor of Sandy.
It has been a busy week, but Sandy doesn't need constant watching anymore. I was finally able to get more done on my Talvinen sweater. I decided to make the buttonhole and button bands before cutting the steek and use crochet reinforcement instead of sewing on the sewing machine, because this yarn is fairly sticky/clingy.
After I cut the steek down the middle, I had to trim the facing next to the crocheted row. If I had made the steek only five stitches wide, I could have saved this step.
I used the main color yarn to sew down the facings on the inside with an overcast stitch. The blue vertical line is the only part of the original steek left exposed.
I used lace-blocking wires to help with the blocking. My wooly board is really useful when the sweater has a drop shoulder, making it T-shaped, but this one has a round yoke, so that doesn't work as well. It took less than two days to dry.
I used stitch markers to decide where to put the buttons when they come, today or tomorrow, I hope.
Daphne's birthday was Sunday. She has had a lot of dancing and music in the past few days. I can't believe how much she has grown up!
I have a lot of difficulty responding to comments to my blog posts because of technical issues beyond my control (my lack of understanding of how things work). Message me on Facebook, Ravelry or Spoutible if you need information.
If you have a few minutes and are willing, please go to Amazon and B&N and search for "Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook by Peggy Stuart" in Children's. Every click on the page for the book makes it more likely they will keep a good supply in their warehouse and stores. If you are outside the US, you may have a separate website for these retailers. If you have a copy of any of our books, including Emil and Mariah, please leave an honest review on the websites, especially if you bought from them.
Where's my blog: If you want to follow my blog, go here and sign up to follow.
What's on my needles: Ready to sew the buttons on Talvinen cardigan. On Saturday I swatched for the Kultainen käki sweater from Knitted Kalevala, which I ordered during the Rose City Yarn Crawl. And of course the EmPower People Kerchief (hibernating).
What's on my loom: Dust, but I still plan to make some placemats.
What's on my sewing machine: Still ready for back of T-shirt quilt and quilts for Soren and Johan.
What's in The Doll's Storybook: A Picnic by the Lake. Charlotte and Jolena make some sandwiches and then go to an imaginary lake for a picnic. We don't see Jolena eat her sandwich. Find out why not when you read the story.
What's on my iPad/iPhone: Still listening to White Silence by Jodi Taylor. Didn't get very far. Crazy week.
What's in my wine glass: Colossal Reserva 2018 from Lisbon. We've had this one before. It's very nice.
What's my tip of the week: I've discovered that I only need to use the sourdough starter from one jar (of my two), so I've been putting the newly fed jar behind the one already in the fridge, so when I need to use the starter again, I can just grab the one in the front.
Where are my books: The stories in each book first appeared in the blog and they are reproduced with a few changes.
Classic Tales Retold: Stories from The Doll's Storybook is available from BookBabyBookshop and other booksellers worldwide. The stories are Little Green Greatcoat, The Boy Doll Who Cried Wolf and Lost in the Woods.
Emil: Stories from The Doll's Storybook and Mariah: Stories from The Doll's Storybook are also still available from booksellers. The link for Book Baby is here. The three stories in Emil are Best Buds, Getting What You Want, and The Boys Cook Dinner.
If you don't get free shipping from Amazon or B&N, buy from the BookBabyBookshop, because 50% of the price goes to St. Jude. Other booksellers pay much less.
Note: This blog post was produced on the iPad and the MacBook, using the iPhone for some photos and some photo processing. No other computer was used in any stage of composition or posting, and no Windows were opened, waited for, cleaned or broken. No animals or dolls were harmed during the production of this blog post.
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