Lilli has had her second visit to the vet now. The first was a month ago and the second just last week. Both visits were for her vaccinations. With both those complete she can now meet other dogs.

That presents a bit of a problem since Lilli finds that other dogs are extremely interesting and very scary. So there is a lot of jumping around and running away involved. Hopefully that should be solved soon though as we have booked her into puppy lessons starting from next week.

While at the vet we managed to weigh her properly. The first time she was just over 4kg and the second time was 5.25kg. The vet recommended we take her off puppy food and already start her on adult food since she is growing so fast. That is supposed to be quite common for her breed. Fortunately the adult kibbles we got turned out to be pretty much her favourite food (most of the time).

Also last week she lost the first of her puppy teeth, the two top front ones. No sign yet of any others coming out though. She has grown quite a lot and one side effect is that her reach has increased quite a lot and she takes advantage of it to grab anything she can get her teeth around. She had been quite well behaved (mostly) up until last week, so it might be a side effect of teething, or just wanting attention. But we will see if we can it out of her.

The winter has been pretty warm and wet and generally yucky which, for the most part, has resulted in an extremely dirty dog every time we went out for a walk. The worst part is that the road grit and dust from the studded winter tyres didn’t wash off.

Lilli didn’t appreciate it much either since being dirty involves getting baths.

The last few days though have been a complete change. It snowed about 10cm during the weekend and then nearly another 5cm yesterday. Lilli was in a white heaven! There is nothing so much fun as being up to your butt in snow 🙂

And final compulsory cute puppy picture.

It snowed a couple of days ago. The first time it has snowed properly since we first got Lilli.

So going out has been quite an adventure for her. About the only bad thing is that she gets a bit wet and cold after a while.

Plus of course, whatever Lilli likes, Lilli eats. And Lilli likes snow a lot. And the more snow Lilli eats the more she pees.

It’s a tough time being a puppy.

Lilli tried out the sauna!

Not for long though. She had been wondering where we disappeared to every few days and would frequently sit outside and bark if she could hear us talking. So today she followed us in and sat on the floor. We didn’t want that she burnt herself on the oven so we lifted her onto the lowest bench and she happily lay there for a while. But being the restless sort she didn’t stay long.

In other news we fitted a gate across the gap between the kitchen and living room. That means we can block Lilli in the kitchen and laundry if we are out or need to restrict her. The kitchen has become her second bed after her basket in our bedroom.

Speaking of which, she is now sleeping in her own bed again. She started sleeping with us at Christmas while we were away and we didn’t want it to become a habit. Particularly since the first 10 minutes of bed time were spent playing and biting everthing that moves.

But after three nights of crying and sulking she is back in her own bed. She still wants to climb up each night, but after being told no and to go to bed she is soon asleep in her own basket. Not that she can last the whole night without a toilet stop though. But she wakes us up around 3 with the news that she went to the toilet and we should clean it up. Thoughtfully enough, she usually manages to go on the newspaper laid out for her.

It is hard to say no to her though.

Back home it was time to start normal post-Christmas life again. That means going to work and getting Lilli used to being alone.

Fortunately we can quite often work from home, so the transition isn’t so hard.

On the other hand, Lilli spends most of her day like this.

Lilli is growing fast. She is getting much bolder and a bit more vocal now. She will give a bark sometimes and has a tendency to nip at hands or anything that moves fast. She has also discovered that our yard is covered in rabbit poo. And also that rabbit poo is somewhat of a delicacy. We can’t imagine why, but it seems that it is quite a common complaint about dogs.

We have started trying to train her already. I have several books by Stanley Cohen, one of which is The Intelligence of Dogs. He discusses the trainability of many breeds and gives instructions on how to start training from a puppy. We have already gotten her to sit and come, at least within the confines of the house. As it says in several places, the further away the puppy is the less likely they are to respond and that is pretty true.

As a matter of interest he rates the Parson Russell Terrier as of about average trainability. That is an average dog will take 25 to 40 repetitions to understand new commands and on average obeys a first command 50% of the time or better.

That is one reason why we have started to keep Lilli on a leash outside now. She can run pretty fast already and if she took off we couldn’t catch her. Plus she is getting much braver and will frequently start heading to the trees.

Lilli doesn’t get long to settle in before we were away for a few days over Christmas. Which, unfortunately meant quite a long car trip.

She had settle in quite well for the first few days and was playing with her toys and sleeping in her own bed (with a bit of encouragement). She was pretty much making herself at home, although she wasn’t saying much. She had started to explore a bit more, especially around the back yard, but she is still pretty timid at times.

For the car trip we got her a travel box. It is quite big, but should also do when she is fully grown. The trip itself went quite well with just a couple of stops along the way. Most of the time was spent sleeping, either in a lap or in her box.

Christmas went quite well too, although with the stress of being in a strange place again she wanted to be as close to us as possible, especially at night. That was a bad move. Christmas in Varkaus can be quite cold, but this year it was barely below zero with no snow. But that was cold enough for Lilli. She started shivering quite quickly when out. So that was a good excuse for a couple of Christmas presents.

Not that she appreciated it much. But she didn’t shiver so much any more.

Today is the day we picked up a new addition to our household.

She is a Parson Russell Terrier named Lilli. Not that her name means anything in particular (apart from sounding like Lily), but it is pronounced pretty much the same in Finnish and English.

The car ride home was uneventful, she even slept most of the trip. The first night was quiet as well.