Echo’s sleeping positions: Too funny not to post

Echo is such a funny sleeper. I thought that it was just a one time thing, but she continues to sleep half in and half out of her bed whenever she is with me in my craft room. Perhaps I don’t put her bed close enough to me because she doesn’t do the same thing when she is in the living room.

It starts out slow. She actually does start all the way in her bed curled up in a little ball.

Then she slowly works her way out and onto the floor, but can’t seem to bear leaving the bed completely.

No one will get my green puppy. I will guard it with my…zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

She continues stretching and shifting positions, each time moving further and further out of the bed and closer and closer to my chair.

Maybe the floor was cool.

Half in half out. Comfort is overrated. She has nearly made it all the way over to me. Like she is being sneaky or something.

This is my absolute favorite.

Must reach my mommy, but can’t leave bed. She’s just not long enough.

Echo’s first bath

We were finally able to give Echo her first bath. We were under orders from the vet to not give her one until at least ten day after she had been spayed. She did very well though it took a while to get her to stay in the tub for us without trying to jump out.

I wouldn’t say she was completely thrilled, but then again neither are my children.

Once she got the hang of it, or at least realized Andy wasn’t going to let her out, she resigned herself to sitting still.

Poor thing is looking at Alex and wondering why he doesn’t save her. Her eyes say traitor.

Awww, soapy puppy butt.

She was amazingly still while Andy doused her in water to rinse her off.

You could tell she wasn’t enjoying the bath though, merely putting up with it. Those are some truly sad puppy dog eyes.

She survived and shortly following the towel dry was the inevitable dog shake. I got slimed, but at least it was by a clean dog.

The nearly finished garden

We have finally finished the last raised bed for our garden and are looking forward to a small break prior to working on getting it fenced. We still need to add the dirt, but that won’t take too much time, and then put some plants in.

This is Echo trying to be helpful, but, of course, getting in the way.

The posts go up. This is probably the easiest part of the whole process.

It took about two days to get all the boards up and finally we got the rail on the top. It still looks unfinished because we aren’t putting railing all the way around to make room for the fence.

Andy used an outdoor caulk to adhere the rails so that there won’t be any screws visible on top. Can you see how well my corn is growing? I lost one to the squirrels, but the rest are doing great.

The corners look really good if I can toot my husbands horn. Of course he will look at them and tell you they are terrible, but he has standards that I don’t quite get when it comes to his own work.

The tomato plants are doing extremely well too and you will notice that there are more. This is due to my brother in law who brings his abundance of plants to our house to share. So now I have pepper plants along the edges of the garden beds wherever there was space to put them.

The finished shape and boxes. I am super impressed with my husbands ability to come up with and build the things that I ask him to with no prior experience on how to do them. He is an amazing man. Some might even say Super…

Spiderman and his brother

There is a pine tree in our front yard that the boys have found is very easy to climb because the branches act much like round staircase that they can basically just step up. So naturally they climb it whenever they have free time or remember it is there.

Alex thinks he really is Spiderman sometimes and gets constant use out of Jack’s Halloween outfit from three years ago. (Not that Jack doesn’t get just as much use out of it, just Alex wears it more.)

Note the look of complete satisfaction at having successfully climbed a tree just like a spider.

Jack loves anything to do with climbing and loves to see how high he can go.

He slid down the last couple of branches because he found this was easier than climbing down. (Easier on Jack, not so much on the tree.)

More Dog-gone Fun

Oh this dog is just too hilarious. She amuses us everyday with her little puppy ways. We have had her for about a week now and it feels like three months. The people from the Humane Society weren’t kidding when they said adopting a puppy is just like having another baby. Except for the fact that I would never leave a baby locked up in a kennel for any amount of time, I have had just about as much sleep and have had to clean up more than a few accidents a day.

Echo is learning very quickly and is already far more behaved than my children for the majority of the day. (My children seem far more excitable then the dog as well.)  She is slowly learning to wait until we let her outside to use the bathroom and the messes we have had to clean up have dropped dramatically. She loves the outdoors and is very good about sticking to where her “pack” is staying. We have a couple of places to tie her up that give her pretty much free reign of the yard, but also let her go off the leash when Andy or myself are present. With the kids she must always be on a leash.

We have found that she loves sticks from the start and can now add tennis balls to her short list of favorite things to play with.

She is very good at playing fetch with the ball and is a work in progress on releasing the ball to the thrower as she tends to like to just sit down and gnaw on it for a while.

She is otherwise a very good and very smart puppy and still shows no signs of upping her level of energy that most puppies tend to exhibit. She is just as happy laying on the floor by the couch or by the tree as she is chasing things around and biting sticks. 

She did have a few adjustment issues because the kids were gone for the first few days after we got her. She barked and growled at them until she got comfortable with them again. After a few minutes they were all best friends again.

She is a very sweet and loving dog and just as mellow as can be. She puts up with the kids bothering her nonstop and even though she doesn’t like being by herself, she doesn’t whine continually to be let out of her kennel unless she has to go outside. I would say that we are very lucky to have found a dog that fits our family so well. (Now if I could just get her to sleep through the night without whining to get up and go outside to do her business then I would be set.)

Meet Echo

Meet Echo. She is our brand new 3 month old puppy that we adopted from the Ozaukee Humane Society.

She is such a doll and even though we just got her she has wedged her way into our hearts already.

The OHS thinks she is part Shepherd but I think we have decided that she may be a little Greyhound mixed with some type of Terrier. She is very mellow for a puppy and doesn’t bark much at all.

She doesn’t even mind that the boys constantly want to be near her, hold her, and play with her… even when she is tired.

She is currently being crate trained and has not whined once about being put in her crate at night. She has a small bed in the boys room for the daytime naps and then into the crate she goes at night.

We have let her get used to the house and new surroundings the last two days and have even taken her off the leash and let her run in the back yard. We only allow her off the leash when an adult is present for safety reasons and she seems to be pretty good at staying in the yard.

She likes to chase birds and sticks and is fairly adept at returning the sticks to her human. She still needs a little work on dropping them.

Mostly she just likes to follow her humans around.

Or if she doesn’t want to follow them, sometimes they pick her up and carry her to where they want her to go. She has been such a good sport about it and seems to just go with the flow.

The kids just adore her and can’t get enough of her, even though I am sure that will wear off in time.

She hasn’t been getting into a ton of trouble like I thought she might being that she is still a baby.

The hardest part is the potty training, but even that isn’t so bad with hard wood floors.

We aren’t quite sure how big she will get, but we are guessing medium sized, which is what we are looking for since she will mostly be an indoor dog.

Welcome to our family Echo.

A Story by Jack

This was just too cute not to share. Sometimes I wonder what goes on in the mind of my little child and now I know. He has a giant fascination for wildlife, bugs, and all the gross outdoor things that Mommy’s do not like. Good for Dad though.