Banta and Casey are just sooo cute together. When I see them together I can’t help but think back to almost a year ago when we first got Banta and the couple of days she overlapped with Apex. There is so much that is similar in their interactions except that the big dog is yellow and the little dog is black. Casey has gained a lot of confidence in the 12 days that we have had her. Banta has done a great job of mentoring her.
We let Clifford and Casey play a few minutes ago and it was fun to watch. Casey has grown in confidence in the week she has been with us and she held her own with Clifford who is almost a year old and three times her weight. A couple of times Casey latched on to Clifford’s tail. Clifford didn’t quite know what to do, so he went around in circles trying to get her to let go. Mean while Casey is going around in the same circle with her mouth firmly on his tail. It was hilarious – two black labs following each other around and around, a big one and a little one! They enjoyed munching on ice cubes together in the kitchen afterward to cool them down.
Today we had an extended family photo for my family so of course our two girl pups were included. We did it at my sisters house so Casey had her first car ride since she got home from the puppy truck. She was not happy about riding in the car. We put her in her kennel in the back and she was fine until we started moving. She didn’t complain the whole way there and on the way home she quieted down sooner. I’m sure that a few more trips in the car and she will be doing just fine.
Casey was ready for a nap after we were and she curled up in Bill’s lap. In the afternoon we drove to Provo to help my niece move. We use to live in the same house so it was fun to see old neighbors and introduce Casey to them. We brought two kennels for the girls to relax in while we were busy and they were both little angels. It has been a busy day for her but she handled everything just fine.
We had a bit of a breakthrough with relieving today. Yesterday afternoon through this morning Casey did almost half of her relieving in the house. Most of the time I took her outside to our traditional relieving area on the drive way she showed no interest in relieving. She didn’t have any accidents on the carpet so the clean-up was easy. Today it occurred to me what the problem might be. Yesterday on one of her first trips to the relieving area a big souped up pick-up truck roared by and scared Casey. She didn’t seem to be over-reacting to cars going by now but my Dad commented that she seemed a little nervous out there and she never really relaxed. The clincher was when I finally took her inside and put her in the x-pen she promptly squatted and peed! So after discussing it with Bill we decided to move Casey’s relieving area to the backyard. It has worked wonders. She has relieved every time we have taken her out now and only had one accident. That was when she paused for a moment while playing tug with my Dad. Yahoo! It is a relief to have that back on track.
telling family tales 