Stop! Cuddle Time!!!

I jokingly refer to this as mine and Margot's MySpace pic.

I have no problem admitting that I love that Margot is a Mama’s girl.  I especially love the fact that she always kind of has to be wherever I am, even if she’s not giving me 100% of her attention.  Like, when I’m sitting on the living room floor in front of the fireplace (aka “my spot”) and she’s romping around the living room, playing with her toys, eventually she always gravitates over to where I’m sitting and ends up playing with that toy on my legs or in my lap.  I especially love it when she tries to climb into my lap after she gets tired of playing, like she used to when she was tiny.  She’s too big to fully fit in my lap anymore, but she still tries her best by curling up into a tight, little ball.  If she can’t get comfortable, she’ll settle for lying on the floor beside me and resting her head in my lap, even if the nice, big, soft couch behind me is completely empty. 

She always ends up in Mama's lap.  :)

Margot has also recently started “helping” me with housework.  She’ll follow me from room to room as I straighten up, and she especially loves to help “pre-wash” the dishes by licking the pots, pans, and plates that are within her reach as I’m loading the dishwasher.   It’s all very, very helpful, and I’m constantly thanking Miss Margot and telling her that I’m not sure how I’d ever get the housework done without her.  ;)

As much as Margot seems to prefer being by my side more than anyone else, she’s still very much a Daddy’s girl, as well.  In fact, when it comes to giving kisses, Justin is definitely her favorite person in the whole wide world.  Most people, including myself, can only take so many of Margot’s kisses before we have to push her away, but Justin loves receiving her kisses as much as she loves giving them, which absolutely makes her day.  As soon as she jumps onto the couch and starts licking his cheek, Justin says, “Kisses?!?!  Thank you, Margot!”  Hearing this positive feedback always gets her very excited, and her little nubble (aka her docked tail) starts wiggling back and forth as she continues licking him all over his face.  Without fail, Margot’s excitement and bombardment of kisses always sends Justin into a giggle fit, which only excites Margot more.   I have to say, it’s pretty stinkin’ adorable. 

Cuddle pile with Justin and Sam

Justin is also Margot’s go-to person whenever she’s really cold and needs major cuddles in order to get warmed up.   Whenever she gets a bath, as soon as I’m finished towel-drying her and she’s released from the bathroom, she always lets Justin wrap her in a towel and a blanket, and then he holds her until she eventually stops shivering and usually falls asleep in his arms.  Also, if it’s not very cold in the morning when I let Margot out to use the bathroom, she’ll usually come back inside and immediately start playing with Sam.  However, if it’s an extremely cold, frosty morning, as soon as I let Margot back inside she makes a beeline up the stairs and jumps into the bed with Justin so that he’ll cuddle her under the blankets.  That pup does NOT like to be cold!  (Most Dobes don’t.)

Speaking of Sam, she and Margot are continuing to get along extremely well.  They basically just play, cuddle, eat, and sleep together.  I still cannot get over how much Sam plays now.  It cracks me up sometimes because Sam almost looks like she’s annoyed with Margot and wants her to stop bugging her, but as soon as Margot stops, Sam gets her started again.  I also have to laugh every time Sam puts Margot’s whole head inside her mouth, and Margot just lets her!  I have no idea what that’s all about, but they both seem to enjoy it, so whatever! 



Sam's method of shutting Margot up is quite effective.



Anyway, as far as developmental milestones go, the only thing I really have to report is that Margot is continuing to do well with housebreaking.  I think she’s starting to understand that Justin and I let her and Sam out on a pretty regular schedule (first thing in the morning, in the afternoon when Justin comes home for lunch, as soon as I get home from work in the evening, about an hour after dinner, and then one final time before bed).   If she needs to go in between any of those scheduled times, she’s been pretty good about making her needs known, either by giving us “the look” or even whining on occasion.  She’s had very few accidents in the house while we’re home, although we do still occasionally find a mess in her crate, which sucks.  However, I’m pretty sure that she does try to hold it for as long as she can because she doesn’t use the bathroom in her crate regularly.



21 wks-old!



I’m hoping to get Margot scheduled to be spayed during the week of Thanksgiving, but that all depends on whether or not I book a wedding this weekend (I have two consultations lined up today and tomorrow).   So, cross your fingers for me/us! 

15-Week Progress Report



15 weeks-old!

Margot is 15 weeks-old today, which means by this time next week we’ll be playing in the park, going on walks, and playing with other dogs!  Hooray!!!!  I’m so excited (in case you couldn’t already tell)!

Okay, I have to make her 15-week progress report kind of quick because I don’t have a lot of time to type today.   Actually, the only notable change this week has been the loss of many of her baby teeth.   That, and the fact that she’s growing like a weed!  She’s almost too big to fit in my lap anymore, although she doesn’t seem to realize that yet, which is fine by me. 



Lap/pajama time!



I also still can’t get Margot to “tell me” when she needs to use the bathroom, but I know she’s still a little young to fully grasp that concept, and it’s obvious that she knows that she’s supposed to use the bathroom outside because almost all of her accidents happen in the kitchen by the back door now.  Also, this morning I needed to load the dishwasher and do a few other things before I got in the shower, so I didn’t have much time to stand outside with Margot and wait for her to go #2.   She wasn’t real happy about having to pee outside, though, because it had rained overnight, and she hates the wet grass.  So, as soon as she peed, she ran back to the sliding glass door to be let inside.  I decided to let her in, but I kept the sliding door open so that she’d be able to run out if she had to do #2 while I was loading the dishwasher.  Sure enough, after a few minutes of being inside, I heard Margot run past me and out towards the back door again.  I thought, “What a good girl!”  However, when I was about to leave for work and went back there to close the sliding door, I found a pile of poop RIGHT beside the doorway!  So, Margot had, indeed, run to the back door because she had to use the bathroom earlier, but I guess she took one look at the wet deck and thought, “Screw that!  I’ll just poop right here.”  At least I have a sense of humor about it, and I actually take it as a sign of progress because she WAS obviously trying to go outside, but just changed her mind after she saw that the ground was still wet. 

Anyway, other than that, not much has changed since last week.  Margot and Sam are still getting along really well.  They’re playing tug a lot more, which was always Sam’s game of choice when she used to play with Lexie.  Come to think of it, that may also be why Margot has lost so many teeth recently!  Haha! 

12-Week Progress Report

Margot is 12 weeks-old today!  Before I get into her progress report, though, I kind of wanted to apologize for yesterday’s super depressing blog post.  I’m happy to report, however, that I’m feeling a little better today.    My overall situation hasn’t changed, unfortunately, but it’s rare that I will stay as upset as I was yesterday for more than just a day or two.  If I allow myself a whole day to just wallow in self-pity and bawl my eyes out, eventually I’ll reach the point where I simply can’t stand feeling so down anymore, and I’ll find a way to pull myself out of it. 

Yesterday evening, Margot helped greatly in that endeavor.  Justin was spending the evening with some friends and Ashley was visiting her family in Ohio, so I asked Zach and Kristy if I could bring Margot over to their place because I really didn’t want to spend the evening at home alone.  I’m so glad that I went over there, too, because I spent the entire evening talking about wedding plans with Kristy and playing ball with Margot for the first time.  In fact, I felt like last night was the first time that Margot had ever REALLY played with me, like interactively.   She plays all the time, of course, but usually I just sit on the floor cross-legged and let her flop into my lap as she chews on one of her toys.   I’ve tried playing ball with her once or twice before, but she couldn’t seem to figure out that she’s supposed to retrieve the ball after I roll it across the room and then bring it back to me. 

Last night at Zach and Kristy’s, though, Margot finally grasped the concept of how to play ball!  She especially loved it when I would grip the ball while it was still in her mouth and kind of “whip” her back and forth until the ball wiggled free from her grasp.  Sometimes, after retrieving the ball, she’d start making that back-and-forth motion on her own before I even had the chance to do it to her!  (I had Kristy take a video of this because it’s hard to explain, and I also wanted Justin to see it when he got home.)

My other favorite part about playing ball with Margot was when she’d sort of hide on the opposite side of the coffee table and peek at me under the table with her butt still up in the air.   I would then assume the same position to peek back at her, and she would quickly “hide” behind one of the table legs.  We would play this little game of Hide-and-Seek for a few minutes until she’d finally dart past me in hopes that I would try to grab the ball from her as she ran by.  She would run past me several times like this before finally stopping and allowing me to grip the ball so that I could whip her back and forth again. 

As I’m writing this, I realize that I’m describing our little game in such detail that one might think that I actually believed Margot and I invented the entire concept of “playing ball” last night.  Haha!  I’m sorry.  I’m just excited about it because, like I said, it was the first time Margot had ever played an actual interactive game with me, and it was so much fun!  It was great exercise for her, too. 

Okay, so I guess that learning how to play ball should be a part of Margot’s 12-week progress report.  Unfortunately, because we spent all last week at the beach, I don’t have much else to add in terms of specific milestones or achievements.  I will say that Margot is now able to crawl up onto the couch all by herself (and it’s the cutest thing to watch), she seems to be in the early teething phase, and she’s able to “hold it” for longer periods of time when she’s in her crate.  The biggest thing I’ve noticed about Margot this week, however, is something that I also mentioned in yesterday’s blog, which is how well-behaved Margot is for her age.  When she plays, most of the time she just lays on her doggy bed in the living room and chews on her stuffed animals or her bones.  Every now and then she’ll get up and wander around the house looking for something new to get into (mostly shoes or some type of paper), but as soon as we tell her “no” and take that item away from her, she just goes right back to playing with her toys.  If she decides she wants to join me and/or Justin on the couch, all we have to do is hold the Nylabone for her, and she is perfectly content just lying there beside us, chewing on her bone while we watch TV.  Quite often, we will catch her watching TV with us while she’s gnawing on her bone, which always cracks me up.

Unfortunately, we’re still working on the housebreaking, as Margot still doesn’t clearly indicate when she needs to use the bathroom.  I know I shouldn’t consider this “progress,” but I’m actually kind of thankful that at least she’s started having her accidents in the kitchen instead of on the carpet because they’re much easier to clean up!  I would also like to think that the reason why she’s having her accidents in the kitchen now is because she is at least attempting to go outside on her own.  We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing, though, and hopefully she’ll eventually start whining or something when she sees that the kitchen door is shut instead of just having an accident.

A Few of My Favorite Things (So Far)

No matter how rotten Margot is behaving (and trust me, last night she was PURE rotten), I can’t help but love the fact that she has recently decided that she prefers to play in my lap more than anywhere else.  She can be running all over the place, chasing a toy, terrorizing Sam, etc., but inevitably she will always come charging straight back to where I sit cross-legged on the floor and leap/flop right into my lap.  Sometimes she just sort of “tags” me, as if I’m her home base, and then she takes off running again, but most of the time she actually prefers to just stay in my lap to gnaw on her chew toys.   I really need to have Justin take a photo of her doing this in the near future because there will soon come a day when she’s too big to play in my lap like that.  :'-(

Another thing I love is the time that Margot and I spend in the bathroom together each morning while I get ready for work.  I started bringing her into the bathroom with me when she was around 7 weeks-old because I don’t want to leave her in her crate all morning, especially after she just slept in it all night and we have to put her back in her crate before we leave for work.  So, every morning I grab a couple of chew toys and a couple of biscuits, and I carry them and Margot to the upstairs bathroom with me so I can start getting ready for work.  She doesn’t like it when I disappear behind the shower curtain, and every now and then she actually takes a little peak to make sure I’m still there, but usually she just lies on the bathmat and kills time by gnawing on something.  Unfortunately, while I’m in the shower I can’t keep a close eye on her, and sometimes she finds something to chew on that she shouldn’t.   For example, the other day I accidentally forgot to put up the cord to my straightening iron, and I found her chewing on it when I got out of the shower.  Thankfully, my straightening iron is still functional because she didn’t do too much damage to the cord, but I haven’t made the mistake of leaving cords within her reach since then.  This morning, I came out of the shower to find her chewing on the pajama bottoms I had taken off just moments earlier.  Again, lesson learned:  stop being a lazy slob and put discarded clothes in the hamper! 

I’ve also started practicing commands with Margot while I’ve got her isolated in the bathroom away from Sam and Jocie, because it’s actually very difficult trying to train her with her big sisters around.  Sam is a treat hound and goes NUTS as soon as she hears me tell Margot to “sit.”  She knows that means that the puppy is about to receive a treat, and she’ll be damned if she’s going to miss out on that!  So, Sam always interrupts our training sessions by barking and trying to get in between me and Margot, and Jocie usually comes running whenever she hears all the commotion and starts demanding a treat, as well.  It’s total chaos and can be quite unproductive, so I usually try to spend some time training Margot alone out on the back deck  after Sam and Jocie have gone inside and now also while I’ve got Margot in the bathroom by herself in the morning. 

Here’s a little video I shot this morning.  You can see how Margot is so good at sitting that she will actually do it before I even have a chance to give her the command.  I also ask her to “lie down” in this video, although I only just started teaching her this command a few days ago and she doesn’t quite get it yet.  I wasn’t able to film this because I had a treat in one hand and my iPhone in the other, but I also use a hand gesture whenever I give her the command to “lie down” by lowering my hand, palm down, and touching the floor.  This morning, each time I lowered my hand to the floor and said, “Lie down, Margot,” she would actually raise her paw and kind of wave at me.  It made me wonder if, by using that hand gesture, she may actually think that I want her to make the same gesture with her paw.  Haha!  I’m really only half kidding.  I’m sure she’s probably waving because she just wants me to hurry up and give her a treat since she’s already sitting like a good girl, but then again, Margot is a Puppy Genius….

For the most part, though, Margot is pretty good while she’s in the bathroom with me.  Sometimes she gets a little whiny because she wants me to sit in the floor so she can play in my lap, but unfortunately I just don’t have time.  I’ve been trying to make up some hours at work since I had to take two sick days a couple weeks ago (stomach virus), which is why I haven’t had a lot of extra time in the morning lately, but after this week I may try to adjust my schedule so that I can actually sit and play with her for about 30 minutes before I leave for work.  In the meantime, Margot usually just ends up passing out on the bathmat a few minutes before I’ve finished getting ready, and then I carry her sleepy little body back downstairs and put her in her crate. 

Finally, I love how interested Margot seems to be in music, particularly orchestral music.  I discovered this the very first morning that I brought her into the bathroom with me.  I always turn on music before I shower, and when I did, Margot stopped dead in her tracks, turned to look at my iPhone dock, and then actually walked toward the sound.  I realized that she had never really heard music before, as we usually left the TV turned on to a random television station at night because we thought that hearing people talking in the other room would keep her from feeling lonely.   

Later that evening, as Justin and I were watching a movie and playing with Margot on the couch, she suddenly stopped and looked at the television during a scene that involved a rising orchestral crescendo.   At first, we thought that it was just the rising volume and intensity of the scene itself that caught her attention, but she reacted the same way a little later on during a scene that had a violin playing softly in the background.  We laughed at how interested she seemed to be in the music, and I told Justin that she had reacted very similarly that morning when I turned on my iPod.  So, ever since then, we have left the TV tuned to the classical music station each night when we go to bed.

I realize that this probably sounds ridiculous, especially since I already jokingly refer to Margot as a “puppy genius,” but I swear that she really does seem to prefer orchestral-type music to any other kind.  This morning was a perfect example.  I was listening to the “Cool New Music: Summer 2012” playlist on the Songza app, which consisted mostly of indie-type songs from artists like Fiona Apple, Passion Pit, Walk the Moon, etc.  Margot was just playing and doing her usual thing the whole time the music was playing, but then a really pretty instrumental song came on that featured a lot of violins and wood instruments (I wish I could remember the name of the song and/or artist), and, once again, Margot stopped what she was doing and turned to look at where the music was coming from.  I guess there’s just something about those types of sounds that grab her attention more than other instruments, such as drums and guitars.  No matter what that reason may be, we think it’s pretty darn cute.