Demon spawn and Fibers

Leeloo went in for a follow-up visit to check on her laceration. It was healing fine, but the scab was resistant to being removed. Dr. Yung had to take her back and shave it off. Tiny little mark, lots of scab material. We also did a weight check and she's up to 2.9 pounds and on track for her growth. From the vet's we headed to Forest Grove for the Faire in the Grove.

We saw Rachel, Owen and Hazel as we were coming in and they met up with us at the canopy Brandon had set up. Leeloo had fun playing with Hazel. Hazel quickly learned how to use Leeloo's harness to bring her back into reach.

Rachel took a photo of Brandon and Hugh playing (recorder and ocarina):

After the babies had fun playing with each other we headed out in separate directions, they'd already seen most of the booths. Once Leeloo's size is set I will probably have to make her a sweater or something for the fall, I had to keep her bundled up to keep her warm (sun in my eyes, so a frown type look):

I was able to find a nice chemise for a dress that Caterina gave me. I still need to make one of course, along with a skirt, but I have more clothes to wear Memorial Day Weekend this way. Caterina took this pic of the three of us: 

Friday afternoon I had taken Leeloo over to Sharon's house to meet Toki. She was a little worried by Jimmy barking outside, she was slow to warm up to Toki but was very calm with him. He loved crawling over me and getting scritches, I know all the 'right' ones. ;-) There was a little bit of play, but I think more would happen if we had them over for a visit. This week though is a week of rain so not a lot of playing outside with visitors. Darn it. I picked up a pretty pale pink merino/tencel roving that Sharon had on sale, and I couldn't resist getting eight ounces of it. Yes, even though its pink.

On Ravelry I had Cynthia contact me about my half skein of Malabrigo Lace in Bobby Blue. She's making a Citron and needed it to finish. She offered up a skein of her Azul for it and since I didn't have anything definite planned for it, I said sure. Funny thing is, she lives in Portland Maine, and I bought the skein from Knit-Purl, in Portland Oregon. I didn't ask which Azul she had but hoped for the Profundo, and that's what she sent:

So wondering about the 'demonspawn' part? ;-) Leeloo has been here for three weeks and definitely comfortable with the household now. She can be very sweet and snuggly but she'll have bursts, usually late in the day where she'll become a little evil land shark attacking hands and trying to tear you to pieces - thus the demon spawn. She also becomes sensitive to being touched and tries to attack you for doing it. I think the second part is from being a 'toy' sized dog. 

I still carry her out to go potty, but she is starting to get to play down on the floor and has been going to the sliding glass door to let me know she needs to go out. I just need to hook up a bell for her to ring to let me know as a back up. I'm trying to show her how to get around the house by following me, but sometimes her puppy brain gets distracted and she doesn't always make it.

Norbert still follows us to the door if not outside for her potty trips. If I put her in her crate, she still shrieks and he whines about it. (We're working on making the crate a good thing.) He is doing a concerted effort to ignore Leeloo for the most part. He'll let her zip around and bump into his backend and ignore it. He just looks at her if he's laying down and she's trying to get him to play and she backs off. He just has growled at her if he has a toy that he's guarding or like tonight has a rawhide stick that he's taken back from her. He's even gone and laid down near her while she's napping, but I'm still keeping a close eye on their interactions. Leeloo has a tendency to be a little suicidal in trying to get him to play with her. 

Having this tiny of a puppy is also causing better housecleaning. She finds any tiny little bit on the floor and of course its in her mouth. I've gone through the toy bucket and cleaned out old toys and bones and washed everything else. More cleaning and organizing of various of the house will be happening - hey - 'spring cleaning' at its finest. I always used to tell the puppy group that they make us better housekeepers and I'm reliving that fact. 

Out & About & a Playdate

Wednesday morning Leeloo went to visit the ladies at spinning. She really liked Shelia and didn't seem to trigger any dog allergy symptoms. Leeloo also got to meet/see a baby, Hazel in a stroller while mom Rachel held Leeloo:

Robyn with her son (18 months old) Jonathan also said hi. Gail loved snuggling a puppy and I think if she could have gotten away with it would have taken her home. ;-)  Sara brought two year old Connor, but Connor scared Leeloo, so she didn't get close. 

Wednesdays are also knit night at Whole Foods, so a trip there was in order. I didn't plan to stay to knit, just a social visit. Sharon caught sight of Leeloo and was the first to get to hold her in the puppy passing. She has a puppy Toki that is a Chihuahua/Pekingese crossbreed. He's almost seven months old and we have a playdate with him on Friday (I get to pick up some lovely merino/tencel roving Sharon is holding for me.) From Sharon she went to Karen to be held followed by Duffy. Cindy looked on and did pet her too and deem her adorable. ;-) (Cindy wasn't the only one cooing over Leeloo's adorableness, all of them will have to be watched carefully not to try to sneak her home with themselves. VBG) I then zipped her up in my jacket with her head peaking out so I could bring home some Mushroom Barley soup and a mini-baguette for dinner. The guy at the cash register didn't say anything about not bringing her inside the store, just pointed out that there were dog treats outside the doors. Very nice! (Sorry no pics because I figured it would be too difficult.)

After leaving Whole Foods we stopped in at a new store called Pet Pros and found a couple of small stuffed toys for Leeloo and a stuffed parrot for Norbert. I also picked up a little purple harness for Leeloo to wear so I can have her on a leather show lead, or another light leash, this weekend. Then we went down to the JoAnn's to pick up some Rit dye for Brandon to dye his doublet and pants he made (yes, he did all his own sewing, including some by hand!) for Faire in the Grove. He plans to spend the weekend hanging out. Leeloo and I may make an appearance on Saturday, I've been invited to bring my spinning wheel (even though its not historically accurate) and demo. While at JoAnn's Leeloo got to meet a man with a mustache and goatee. On the way home there was a quick stop into Walgreen's where she got to meet a man with a mustache. 

Whew! Busy day/night meeting lots of new people of different size and shapes and facial hair. All important things for little puppies to do. There were no shopping carts around, so I'll have to try for those this weekend. ;-)

Since the weather said that today, Earth day, was supposed to be nice, I made plans with Tammy to have her bring Kim (teenager) and Lilly, the six month old Miniature Australian Shepard for a play date. I kept Norbert inside so that he didn't try to guard Leeloo. He was most upset about people coming to visit, plus another dog and not getting to interact with them.  He did get out for a few minutes when I went in to get water for the puppies and he did really well. He did a tiny little snark with Lilly because she wasn't letting him greet her properly, from there things were fine for him. Lilly was a little stressed and peed on Kim. Overall a very enjoyable afternoon talking about dogs and their behavior and watching two puppies have fun!

ETA: Forgot to mention that as Tammy, Kim and Lilly were heading home I saw a lady walking a tiny little Papillon, named Jazzy. So Leeloo and I went to meet another little dog. She wasn't a puppy, but still looked incredibly tiny. Probably about the size Leeloo may end up.

I have three videos, one a bit large that I'll link to if you'd like to see all the action and another small one, that really has more of Leeloo.

After eating some dinner, Leeloo has spent a very quiet evening sleeping. Looks like we'll have a busy next few days with fiber and puppy fun, so more pics and possibly videos coming soon!

Leeloo's First Week here

It's been a busy first week here for Leeloo. Sunday's Earthdog watching. Monday was full of car rides with a rear end accident and going to the vet's office. The vet says that she's a healthy little girl but was surprised to find that the scratching that she had been doing at her ears were from ear mites. She doesn't usually see that in puppies. So seven days of meds, off seven days and back on for another seven and she'll be mite free. I'm also treating Norbert because he's slept in the same areas as Leeloo. She also weighed in at two pounds five ounces.

(Leeloo following Norbert around in the backyard - filmed with Brandon's Blackberry, sorry- poor video quality)

Leeloo sleeps on the bed with us and has only had one or two little accidents, where I wasn't getting up fast enough to take her out. My mistakes. Living room accidents have been similar. I'm getting back into that routine of 'Leeloo wakes up, we both go outside'. Thankfully the rain sprinkles hasn't bothered and she goes outside anyway. There's also the 'Leeloo eats/drinks and within ten minutes we go outside'. Thankfully she sleeps through most of the night. This morning was the earliest she was up at 5:30am. Ugh!

We get up and go outside to potty then come in and eat some kibbles, then play for an hour or so. Then she's ready for another nap so I can get another hour or so of sleep. This morning I needed much more sleep since I had problems getting to sleep last night. Hope that isn't repeated! There's eating and playing, indoors and outdoors.

Norbert even solicited play with Leeloo on his own. Silly boy kept trying to figure out how to hump her though and really wanted to play bitey face games like he did with Nessa. He recognized she's smaller and was on his belly trying to play, but just a little too enthusiastic with the tug toy. He let her steal his tennis ball when he dropped it and things seemed to be going well. It wasn't until Saturday afternoon when William noticed that Norbert was limping that things went bad. Leeloo was trying to play with him as they had been and he curled his lips at her. So pulled her out and redirected to other activities.

Since baths are supposed to be a regular part of her grooming, I thought I should introduce them early to Leeloo. She doesn't agree:

Hair dryers have also been deemed pretty scary/evil things, even on low heat, low blow.

I don't know maybe it might have partially been her change of smell and the sore foot, but she and Norbert were on the floor by my feet and I saw the muscles pulling back on Norbert's face and I'm yelling and reaching for Leeloo when Norbert snarked her. I'm just hearing terrified puppy squeals and picking her up. Brandon is the one seeing her over my shoulder that sees the blood. 8pm at night and Frontier is closed, so a call to Dove Lewis because we couldn't tell if her eye was involved or not. It was a very long drive there. They do have an efficient triage group that came and scooped her up to check her out and see about pain meds. After about a half an hour or so, they brought her back out because they hadn't given her the pain meds but she wouldn't calm down. She did as soon as I had her back again. Well there was Anton the big white pointy nose poodle in with his brother Andre the big black poodle getting stitches in his face from a dog park visit, that bothered her a bit. So she's met fancy standard poodles and has been less than impressed. 

After we were there for over an hour and a half, just like visiting the people ER, we got to see the vet. She did very well with the temperature taking and having her breathing checked. He thought it was just a small laceration under her eye and no stitches needed, but wanted to stain the eye to make sure there was nothing there. Off they went to do that and off we went back to the waiting room. I think that took about twenty minutes and then she was back with us and found out her eye was fine and we were going home with some syringes with pain meds (finally) and an antibiotic ointment for her eye. Even though it was fine, its safer to treat it than not. So my first and hopefully last visit to the animal emergency room.

Norbert and Leeloo are avoiding each other. Norbert willingly since his foot still hurts, I think he slammed it into the door or wall chasing after balls by the front door. It seems like his fore-toe on his right foot. Since there is nothing the vet can do if it is broken except recommend rest, that's what we're doing. Last night he was a bit 'green' after going into the newly mowed yard:

(Imagine how his feet look too. He's also in need of another trim, if only his eyebrows.)

Leeloo outside before Brandon got home, just starting to sprinkle and she's oblivious to it:

Can you see the laceration under her left eye? She's still a terror with growing plants her height or bigger, finds all the sticks blown down, wakes you up with puppy kisses and gentle nibbles to the chin and attacks shoelaces:

Norbert does Earthdog (pic heavy)

This morning we as a family headed over to Canby and a paintball place to let Norbert experience the terrier sport of Earthdog the local Dachsund Club was putting on for people. $25 for an hour, one on one help and six out of eight stations.

Here's Norbert getting to see the rat in the cage. The cage is then moved and he's supposed to follow it. He did but after a few times, he's like - is that it? The lady commented that the 'smart' dogs are the hardest to do these with. Um, yeah. Okay.

From there we moved on to follow a rat track along the ditch. Find the three tubes along the way. Two of them empty (but stuff inside like rat bedding) and one with a rat inside. We found all those:

Leeloo was along also. She ended up having the best seat and the best viewing - from William's jacket:

Next up was tunnel introduction. They had wooden three sided tunnels that the dogs could practice going through. They were pretty short, unless you're a tiny puppy or a dachsund. Norbert was less than thrilled with the idea of these tunnels. This from a dog who had fun in puppy agility going through the chute?! So we moved on to the short wood tunnels underground. This was a two person job and the cameraman (AKA Brandon) had to change jobs and help with this process. With some persuasion to enter, he zipped across and out - some nudging and cheese/dried liver were involved with that. (So no pics here with these two.) He did very well with the little mini-tunnel with the rat in the end (of course he found it above ground first, little snot.)

They had a bunch of cardboard boxes piled up with a rat in another tube (all of these other rats by the way other than the store bought one in the cage were wild.) There was even supposed to be a rat trail to it. He found the trail, found the previous dog's p-mail and said - "yeah, there's a rat in there. what? you want me to go in there? don' think so"

With one last area that we could go to, the Junior/Senior course - opening and three 45 degree turns to get to the rat with a rat trail laid in, all under ground of course, with a rat at the end. He found the entrance to the tunnel then went around the area and found where the rat was  - all above ground again. Tried to get him to go through the tunnel and he got to the first turn and said "don' think so" again and backed back out. 

All this 'rat stuff' was hard work, as evidenced by the tongue hanging out. He has an incredibly long tongue too.

There was cheese involved with this picture of absolute attention:

Norbert says he doesn't feel like an 'earthdog' right now, he's more of an 'urbandog' with a rat kill already to his credit. He's willing to give it a go if there's another one like this.

William and Leeloo hanging out in the chair waiting for us to finish up, then her running to come join back up with us:

Leeloo still wasn't too thrilled with the car ride on the way over, but did much better on the way home. It was a long hour with lot to see/smell/hear with all the dogs and people, so she was tired out. Leeloo enjoyed the sunny weather and showed more interest in playing in the backyard this afternoon. She's terrorized the little blackberry starts that 'were' growing as well as some Hazelnut starts (the birds bring them over the fence and crack them in the maple tree, we get starts from the shells that Nessa missed foraging through the winter) and some grass taller than her. She also tried carrying around some sticks and did a pretty good 'shake-kill' with one branch almost as long as her. Its funny to watch her play bounces, that are kind of like little twisty circles. Confidence is growing and making some leaps, will have to watch that none are from the furniture or the bed!

ETA: Missed the Spinning Bee today and found out that because of Mother's day there won't be one in May. Looks like June will be the next one, if we're home. We have hopes of using the stepparents cabin up by Steven's Pass for that week. We'd like to hang out by the Foss Creek, take walks in the woods and go into Leavenworth.

Meet LeeLoo

I drove back and forth to Centralia Friday night to meet some puppies and came home with one. This was after setting up an appointment to possibly adopt a 2 year old Yorkie girl, Opal.

I spent the drive crying up there thinking of Nessa and longing for her and knowing that a new puppy wasn't going to be replacing her, just a next step. It was still terribly painful. There were also tears on the drive back but less of them today.

I did get to see and meet mom and dad. Mom was terribly excited to see me and Dad was a little shy. Mom is a half Yorkie - half Silkie Terrier and weighed in at nine pounds. Dad is full Yorkie and weighs five pounds. (If you didn't go check out the link above.)

While meeting the puppies, I went with the express purpose of picking one of the girls, both boys spent most of the time flirting with me. Every time I thought I had a puppy picked out, turns out it was a boy. Then one of the girls kept coming back to me and finally stayed. I was picked.

Other than a few minutes of crying after we left she settled down and slept through the drive. Made it easier to make the drive. Nessa cried the entire trip, she never did learn to like car rides.

Looks like she's about twelve inches long and currently weighing in at two pounds six ounces. I'm hoping that she'll end up in the five or six pound range, but we'll just have to wait and see. We've had more crying today as she adjusts to no siblings or mom to suck on. She's been eating kibble since five weeks but still allowed to nurse. She's also a little snuggle bug that I've been missing.

Norbert has been pretty good with her. Thinks she's interesting, protective of her but that did snark once when she got near William's feet. We'll be keeping an eye on their interactions of course! We have Nickel and Cedi here for the weekend and Norbert is also keeping Nickel away from her. Norbert doesn't challenge Cedi in any way and defers to her. Sometimes he's frustrated because she's laying across the hallway and he can't get around her. Kind of funny to see.

Bounced around names all day and Carissa commented that she reminds her of her dog Lola and suggested Lulu. Which triggered the Fifth Element character Leeloo name. It's one of our family favorite movies. So here's Leeloo:

I need to clip some nose hairs that are causing her eyes to tear because they poke her in the eye. We have a vet appointment for Monday afternoon, earliest I could get a particular vet, she's popular. I'm remembering what its like to have a baby in the house. Lots of sleeping, some eating, going outside (its a little intimidating) and playing.

Knit Picks Spring Sample Event

I met up with seven local knitter friends (Trtlgrl, GirlyWithATwist, LavandarKnits, ElusiveFirefly, Norichan, Alyssa and Kathy) at the Knit Picks Yarn Party they had in Portland this evening. We all received door prize tickets and a coupon for 10% off. I'm using my discount to order the yarn for William's Christmas present.

They had little 'yarn truffles' of the new Stroll Tonal yarns and their new cotton yarns. I have some pretty 'truffles' to play with (serious flash washout, so pics in the daylight). The cotton ones we are supposed to have enough to make some Dust bunnies or Bunny Nuggets.

Some pics:

Zena was of course also spotted attending, she's Kelley's pride and joy:

I was also lucky enough to have my ticket number drawn. All the needle sets and shawl sets were gone. I picked out a pretty hand painted sock yarn:

A fun evening!  I also got to say hi to a former Intel co-worker, Cindy. It was nice running into her.

Plain Jane

If you've noticed the works in progress along the side, you may have noticed that a couple of them were stalled out. I hurt the back of my neck/shoulders doing that mad Ravelympics knitting. So I took a couple of weeks off from knitting and was just spinning. That wasn't helping things out either, so wasn't doing much of that either. I took knitting and spinning to the beach and both were neglected. Then with Nessa gone I wasn't up for much.

My Wednesday spinning ladies forced me out of the house and I took along the Pingouin grey wool that I received for Christmas. I had thought it would make a nice warm plain shawl(ette) for wearing with SCA garb during the spring. There's a camping event Memorial Day weekend that some have said can be very chilly at night with the winds. Simple four row pattern just knitting seemed like the plan. (For those of you historically inclined - knitting does go back to at least the 1400s, lots of evidence in Germany of it. Most done on metal dpns - yes, they were knitting in the round before they were knitting flat!)

A week later its done:

Norbert on Monday actually played with me for about 15 minutes. Full on Scottie romp. We both get out to take Brandon to work, or he comes with me to pick him up. He really enjoys car rides. He's laying on the couch closer to me, but I can't touch him if he does. He's doing better with his eating. He was pretty excited to see us tonight when we got home and solicited ball play, so another encouraging sign that he's perking up.

In the terrier family I've contemplated: Cairns, Norfolk/Norwich, and Greta's choice - Border. I chatted Wednesday night with a breeder she had talked with at the last Rose City Classic, Charlotte. She's up in Port Angeles Washington. She has a dog that she bred two weeks ago and is waiting to find out if it took. If it did puppies would arrive the first part of May. The puppies would then be ready to go home towards the end of July. Cost of this lovely temperament, healthy background puppy? $1500. I about fell over when I heard that number. While mom did send me some early birthday money, even with combining other gift money/tax refund money, I would be more than a few pennies short. Sigh. Greta did try to help point out this would be money I wouldn't be respending on vet bills for ear infections, bad hips or teeth. 

I was also recommended a Miniature Schnauzer breeder living in Salem who is a second generation breeder. I have a call in with her. 

I know that there is the perfect puppy/dog out there for us. Its just finding her that may be the frustrating part. ;-) Remember patience isn't one of my 'virtues'.