Adventures With Ruby

Ruby has gone from sleeping through the night and allowing me to do the same, to needing a potty break. After several nights of seeing 3am, I decided she was drinking too much water in the evenings. Last night I confiscated the water bowl around 8 and got to sleep from 10 until 5:30. What a treat! Sleep deprivation is my excuse for not updating the blog all week.

Growth is steady. I think the last time I weighed her, earlier in the week, she was about 26 pounds. But its getting hard to weigh her at home these days. She's a lot of dog to hold on to. Not so much the 26 pounds, but the amount of legs that are part of that. She's all legs and feet right now and rather cumbersome to hold on to. Plus I can't see the number on the scales when I'm holding her anymore. She has consistently gained about 2 inches in height every week. Two days ago she ripped the measuring chart off the wall. So...yeah.

My AKC Puppy book says between 3 and 4 months is when puppies start teething. That was obvious this week. It seems she can't keep her teeth off A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G. There must be a half dozen chewies in every corner of this house and she still needs to chew on all sorts of things. Firewood. The corner of a kitchen cabinet. Rugs. Shoes. The cat.

A word about the cat. Lest any of you feel sorry for the rotten little furball, let me be perfectly clear. ZAMBONI DESERVES EVERYTHING HE GETS. If Ruby fails to pay attention to him, he will create a scene to get her attention. He attacks her when she's in 'training' with me and being told to SIT and WAIT. The nightly drive-by is not an accident, it is a way to get Ruby to chase him when she's tired and ready for bed. So that he can screech like he's being slaughtered when she catches him, or even comes CLOSE to catching him. He's a total drama queen. Zam pesters Ruby like an annoying little brother. Don't feel sorry for him.

Most of the week really did seem to be spent taking stuff out of Ruby's mouth and yelling NO NO over and over again. I'M even tired of me saying it.

It's one thing when she gets in trouble from me, but just a little while ago, Ruby got in trouble with the big dog, the queen bee, the big sister. It was HER turn to be the pesty annoying one and Sophie had just about all she could take. She, ahem, 'gently corrected Ruby's persistence.' I witnessed the whole thing and Sophie had every right to say ENOUGH. But Ruby's reaction was so cute, I had to take this picture. 'I'm a bad dog.'

I'm wondering if I'll ever get my lunches back. I don't know at what age/size/maturity Ruby can stay in her kennel for what amounts to 8 hours. She's not there yet, so I'm trying to stretch her mornings. I've been leaving my desk around 10:45, which puts me back at work after letting her out and feeding her, by 11:15. This I do because I still get an awesome parking spot that way. :) I'm going to have to let go of my need for primo parking, though. On Thursday, a meeting kept me at work until 11:30 and she did just fine. I had to park in an outer lot when I returned at noon, but it wasn't that bad.

We had a project to tackle Tuesday night and Ruby was SO helpful (please note intense sarcasm). We installed the new dishwasher that we bought over the weekend. The following pictures speak for themselves.





And finally, I had to include the above picture. Explanation might be needed, but I'm not going to give one. Please feel free to make up your own captions.