Puppy Trip

This week saw a whirlwind round-trip to Utah with a good friend to bring back a puppy. Decker is the proud Daddy of the new baby we brought home. Here are some photos from our adventure.

The pup's pretty Mama "Foxy"

Trying to get the puppy in the mirror to play...

The little silver fox marked boy is the one we came home with. His brothers are terrific too and it was a tough choice which pup we should take. He was great on the trip home, going from car to hotel room to plane with confidence and a wagging tail.

Great Expectations

Did you ever think about how much we expect of our dogs? We want them to:

• Be tolerant of other dogs and people even when they are obnoxious
• "Power up" easily when we want to play, but "turn off" quickly when we do not
• "Walk away" from confrontations rather than getting agressive or defensive
• Be able to distinguish with absolute accuracy when something is a threat or not
• Be confident in all new situations and with all new people no matter how stressful
• Love us unconditionally no matter what.
  

I'm sure we all *want* many other things from our dogs too. We would never have these high expectations for another human, would we?

My wish is that we can all learn to cut our dogs some slack and simply accept some of their characteristics as part of their unique personality instead of always feeling we need to "fix" every little thing we don't care for about them.