Indy at 10 weeks

Indy is 10 weeks old now, and last night we start puppy kindergarten! There is one other puppy in the class, an 11 week old named Ella. Her owner has had her for only a couple of days, and she's all legs and paws right now. (I'm not sure about her breed, she's a sporting breed of a beautiful chocolate brown color.) Ella has a big bark, bigger than Indy, so he was pretty shy.

We discussed potty training, clicker training, sit (which both puppies already knew) and worked on "watch me" and "down". Indy did very well with "watch me" at the beginning, since he was nervous he was completely focused on me and Keith. As the lesson went on and he warmed up to the environment, he got distracted much easier and hot dogs weren't enough any more. The answer... freeze dried chicken liver! With this tasty treat, the instructor started molding Indy into a "down". These are both commands that we will continue to work on at home.

We have a million more cute pictures of Indy to share, but today I'm going to share something a little better. A montage of Indy's 8th and 9th weeks!

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Indy has us running in circles....

And he runs in circles a lot, too. Sam, this one is for you!

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Wedding Pictures

The pictage link of our wedding photos is now working. You can now view all engagement, rehearsal and wedding pictures through that website.

Keith and I will get a DVD of all of the images at some point in the future, so don't feel obligated to order prints through pictage.

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Catalina

I'm behind sharing some photos, but from my mother's request, here are some from our trip to Catalina for Alan and Jenn's wedding.

A view of the harbor taken while we had lunch.

We stayed in a condo with the Pals (Alan, Jenn, Sam and Caroline) and had a blast. We were really close to downtown, although there was a really steep hill to get home!

To me, Catalina seems like Florida and Mackinac Island had a child and put it in the Pacific. The island doesn't have many cars, like Mackinac, but the flora definitely don't belong in Michigan!

We managed to fit 5 people in the California King bed!

The view from our condo

Indy's toy box

Indy discovered his toy box a few days ago. He realized that the toys we kept out of rotation were on the upper shelf, and that if he jumped he could get his front paws up and maybe grab something. Indy also discovered that he could climb into the lower shelf and hang out.

We've started putting his in rotation toys on the bottom shelf. Indy will take them out, and sometimes even put them back in! He also likes to chill on the shelf with all of his toys. (We noticed that he tended to pile all of this toys in one location and lay on top of them... now it just looks like he's cleaning up!)

The following video is from Indy's first attempts to get to the top basket. And there is even a "surprise" ending...

Indy at 9 weeks and his first week home

Today Indy is 9 weeks old, and has been with us almost a week. His personality grows every day. He sleeps a LOT, and is starting to go into his crate on his own to chill. He gets distracted easily, and needs to be reminded that he is in the middle of eating.

When Indy is sleeping, we can do almost anything to him without him complaining


Indy is now sleeping through the night, only barking in the morning (~5:30) to tell us that it is morning time. Last night he went into the crate by himself to nap!

Indy loves to use Keith's legs as a jungle gym. He will play for long periods of time, which makes him super tired and take long naps. (Nap time is great... it allows us to get things done and stop worrying about accidents!)

Earlier I mentioned Indy's Lady Bug Pillow/stuffed animal and how much he loves it... I just didn't say how! Let's just say that Indy is very much a male dog. The pillow has a velcro tab on the bottom which allows you to convert it from a pillow into a stuffed animal shape.

Indy will also play with the lady bug in standard puppy fashion, and loves to try to whip it back and forth. I love the following picture because you can see where his head used to be by a white streak:

Today is also Keith's first day in his new lab at Northwestern. Indy and I walked him to the back door, and boy was Indy upset when Keith went out but we didn't. He went and scratched at his leash and the door, so I decided to take him out. Good think I did because then he peed in his spot! (He had gone about 45 min earlier, so it wasn't a time when I would normally take him out, I just wanted to reward him for asking to go out... and he rewarded me!)

Slideshow of Indy's First Week:

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

The Big(gest) Storm

I finally have the pictures off of my camera to share the events from the big storm Monday 7/11/11.

We were here for a week before there were any storms. Then, on this day, we saw swirls of rain in our courtyard. It went from clear to torrential downpour in 30 seconds!

According to our neighbors, this was one of the worst storms in a long time. We lost power, which wasn't surprising given the number of downed trees! On our street, we saw at least three damaged cars, many more when we walked around the block.

This car was lucky, but the house may not have been. We didn't get close enough to the house to see the damage.

I'm not sure what happened to this car, because we didn't see any trees around it... maybe it had been moved away from the tree that hit it already?

Fortunately for us, this storm happened just before we went to buy a car. We saw at least three cars smashed on our way to the dealership.

This huge tree was blocking the road... but if you look closely you can see that the branches are hiding a car...

This tree was really uprooted!

The car itself didn't look too bad... I didn't see any broken windows anyway.

Since that first storm, we have had many thunderstorms, but so far none have compared to this one!

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Success of the 4th night

Indy still doesn't love going into his crate, but after 3 almost sleepless nights he finally went to bed quietly! We put him in his crate at 9:30 and there was no peep from him for hours! I woke up at 1:45 AM (when we normally would have heard from him) and decided to take him out. He peed (yea!) and then only barked twice when I put him back into his crate. He barked for about 10 min this morning at 5:30, but otherwise I would call this night a success!

Indy's night time progression:

• Night 1: Slept in our bedroom. We would get up to hush him each time he barked until he fell asleep. I think we got max 1 hour of quiet at a time. We didn't know how we were going to make it.
  
• Night 2: On advice from the vet, we put his crate in the living room for the night. Maybe we had 1-2 hours at a time of quiet. We would wait until he stopped barking (for at least 30 sec) and then let him out if we thought it was time for him to pee.
• Night 3: Indy only barked for 5-10 min at a time, waking us twice in the middle of the night. Before that evening, we had found out that our downstairs neighbors didn't hear him at all, so our anxiety about him barking diminished. We had left him in the crate during the day while we ran errands, bringing him a big stuffed ladybug that became his nighttime companion.
• Night 4: Amazing! Almost no barking at all until he woke us up.

We are holding our breath to see if tonight will be as good as last night, but he has been improving so much that we are hopeful. I'm not sure if he is better because we're consistent with ignoring his barking, he is separated from us in the living room or if it is because we put him in his crate with his big stuffed animal (just wait until you see how he plays with this during the day... so funny!)

We have been keeping track of his functions, and that has helped us know when we need to let him out (especially since we take turns watching him!) Keith and I are both super exhausted from keeping near constant watch, but Indy is so sweet 95% of the time that we can get past the times he drives us crazy. I cannot wait for the time when he needs less supervision! We are still having some problems with accidents in the house... but we'll see how that goes.

More Indy pictures and some videos are coming soon!

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Indy at 8 weeks

Indy is 8 weeks and 2 days, and just had his second round of shots. He weighs 4 pounds 11 ounces and is a huge fluffball. He currently follows us around like a little (white) shadow, so we have to be careful not to trip over him. Indy spends a lot of the day sleeping, but when he is awake he is lovable and sweet. Now we just need to get him to allow us to sleep through the night!


Coming home from the airport:

Picking Indy up at the Airport was easier than we had expected... especially since we walked by the Parcel counter after our LA flight the day before. Indy was timid when we got him home, but every hour that passes he is braver and more confident. (His encounter with a lawnmower went very well!)

The first picture of Indy, taken at the airport. His crate was pretty messy after the flight!


Indy after his crate got all cleaned up for the ride home

First bathtime in the sink... now Indy AND his crate are clean!

Right now, Indy is content to sit at our feet as we watch Criminal Minds. He occasionally reacts to something he hears in the TV show (sirens), but doesn't appear to be easily startled.

Other photos of Indy from his first day home:

Rebecca knit Indy a "welcome ribbon" - he didn't really love wearing it, but he sure loved playing with it and was sad when I took it away.

I just learned how to make a slide show from Picasa for a blog post... I think this is a feature I am going to use a lot!

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Indy is home!

We have a lot of other pictures (including some of his first bath... He needed cleaning up after his flight!)

We will also be sharing pictures from our Catalina trip soon (where Indy's god-parents just got married.)

So much excitement!

Soon, Keith and I are off to Catalina island for Alan and Jenn's wedding. Neither of us have been there before, so we are very excited to visit the island and celebrate their marriage!

On the home front, yesterday we finished unpacking the last box. We will share photos of the whole apartment soon... We still have some more pictures to hang!

The "before" and "after" are quite different!

We needed to finish unpacking so we could prepare for Indy, who arrives the day after we return from the wedding. We packed his "go" bag with all of the essentials for picking him up at the airport (we have been watching too much Criminal Minds recently...) Hopefully the plane ride will be a pleasant experience for him!

Wedding Slideshow is now avaliable!

Keith and I just received an email from our wedding photographer... our wedding slideshow is ready! This slideshow will remain online for 2 weeks, but the Pictage album should be online for the next three months.

http://www.genevehoffmanphotography.com/data/web/RebeccaKeithWedding/

Our rehearsal slideshow is also available online.
http://www.genevehoffmanphotography.com/data/web/RebeccaKeithRehearsal/

I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as we do.

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!

Indy at 7 weeks

1 week and 1 day until we get to bring Indy home! Here are some new pictures sent to us from the breeder:

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Did you take any pictures at our wedding? Please send them to us!