It’s probably of little interest to most, and a ton of interest to me. But, here’s what my dogs have been up to since the last post of a similar nature.

Rose was spending her evenings laying on my legs at bedtime, and I decided it must be a problem of having a too small dog bed. She grew considerably in her first month with us and really had to curl herself in a seriously small ball in order to fit the bedroom dog bed. So, I moved the living room bed to the bedroom to see what would happen. She very happily took to that arrangement which allowed me a lot more sleep of my own.

Now, with the weather turning, Lizzie is spending more time using a dog bed, so when I went to repurchase a dog bed for the living room I figured I’d get one large enough for both dogs. I wasn’t sure that they’d both use it at once, but I wanted to prepare for that. Miss Butterfly and I went to the store and bought the largest dog bed we can find. I might have overshot it….

But, Rose took to the new bed immediately, even playing her pretty pretty princess game, where she pretends she cannot possibly get the toy that’s 2 inches away from her nose, and whines for us to get it for her.

So goofy and cute!

Turns out, the large dog bed was super fun for other reasons. We fit on it! Her humans!

In fact, there are moments I wonder who I bought that dog bed for.

Well, I got the dog bed on a Tuesday night. By that Sunday morning:

Mission Accomplished.

I have always been an early riser, sleep in the mornings does not come easily to me. Mr. Ink and I have managed to cobble together a decent routine, if Rose needs to go out at night he will be the one to take the dogs out. But if they want to get up early, that’s on me. Generally, by the time the dogs want to get up, I am already awake. But, having the company of the dogs in the morning has been really pleasant. I’ve got my morning routine down, and then once they’ve had breakfast the dogs generally settle in for quiet time as well. Lizzie will steal Rose’s spot and blanket for more snoozing, and Rose will play relatively quietly on the floor.

Just picture me with coffee and knitting nearby and that’s how my weekend mornings work.

This weekend we visited Rose’s foster family as they’ve just taken in a new foster dog and wanted to meet up. She’s so much more confident than she was, and her foster family was just amazed over it! In my own brain, I need to stop thinking about her as a timid and fearful dog and move her to the category of curious yet cautious. Last evening as I was walking with her, through Halloween decorations and people dressed up, I realized that she wasn’t that upset by them. Less than 2 months ago she’d barely walk on a leash, and each walk was a nightmare because if she got scared she’d either sit and not move or she’d try to slip her collar and hide under shrubbery. There was that one moment where I had to pick up and carry a 37-pound dog because she just couldn’t get over her fear. That is NOT the dog that we have now, thank goodness!

Speaking of poundage of dogs, in the first month at our house, Rose put on 7 pounds and quite a bit of height. The dog we’d been told probably wouldn’t top 40 pounds by the vets ended up being 44 pounds at her one month check-in. Naturally, I was a bit concerned she’d put on another 5 pounds this month, but we did a weigh in last evening and she’s still at 44 pounds. Maybe she just had a last-gasp growth spurt in our home? She’s in her 10th month of life now so I can hope….

Of course, we also did a bunch of time at the dog park over the weekend, and I grabbed a few photos of that. It was a lovely day, we were out of the house for most of the day. It’s hard to catch Rose when she’s running, but I can take a photo of her when she’s gotten a little tired out.

Here she is having gotten a little exhausted, chilling with a stick. Miss Lizzie does dog park a little differently:

She prefers to take a nice long walk, and then chill out and watch the action.

The best part of dog park days happens on the way home:

When Rose, complete with a muddy nose, can’t even remotely keep her eyes open anymore.

And that’s it for dog stories this week!