A sleepy dog is a tired and happy dog. I caught her napping in this photo.
Hazel has had an interesting few days. She got to meet gramma, my mom. She has learned about tractors. She sat down and watched intently for several minutes as the backhoe dug a hole in the distance. She has fallen in love with green grass. My friend, and neighbor Frank has a grassy area next to the road that we walk down and she wants to stop and lay down and bury her nose in it. She rolls around in it too. She loves it. She discovered flies. She was outside this morning laying in the sunshine and a fly was buzzing around near her. She was fascinated by it. Something that she has been doing, almost since she came to live here, is that she watches the television. She sits in front of it like the RCA-Victor Dalmatian.
The little girl loves to play. When she wants to play it’s best to stop whatever you’re doing and participate. Otherwise she’ll choose her own games to play, which could be anything from chewing up a sheet of paper that I never even knew existed, to exploring the cat box. It’s a situation where if it’s quiet, go see what she’s up to.
Speaking of playing, it turns out that the worse dog toys are dog toys, the best are cat toys. Her favorite toy is her bed. It’s a fluffy ring of cradling soft, fuzzy warmness, but it’s also her sparing partner. Sometimes she attacks it viciously, shaking it around as hard and as fast as she can. I just hope that the bed lasts until she’s too big for it. But ultimately she prefers anything but store bought toys. Her fist choice is a stick, second choice is an empty Gatorade bottle. She’s not hard to please.
She loves going outside, but her primary reason is her love of eating small sticks, leaves and dirt in general. We live in a forest with trees all around us so there’s a lot for her to consume. When she’s outside I try to distract her by keeping her busy practicing catching the ball, which she has less than an enthusiastic response to. She much prefers the wonderful things that the forest provides her. I have to keep a close eye on her as there’s really no telling what she’d consume otherwise.
Our walkies seem to be a challenge for her. She understands the word walkies. Whenever I say the word her her ears perk up, even more than they already are, and she gets excited and lets me put the harness and leash on her. Then when it comes to actually walking down the road she sits down like a stubborn old mule. I carry her the first part of the walk and then I put her down, and it’s about that time that she remembers Frank’s grass and then she quicksteps down the road until she’s rolling around in the green grass. Once we leave the grass we walk to the turnaround spot where she usually poops and then she knows it’s time to head back home. We start out walking but within a few seconds she wants to run all the way back home. Needless to say my daily cardio is doing better since Hazel came along.
All in all, she’s a very busy dog who really loves to play… really loves to play. Her habit seems to be to play for a couple of hours and then nap for an hour. That happens until about 8 PM when she sleeps up to 3 hours, then it’s a short play session before it’s bed time for the night. She does very well sleeping through the night, thankfully, but as soon as she’s awake we’ve discovered that it’s best to get up and take her out to do her business. Her potty training is doing very well but she still has an occasional accident, usually because we don’t get to the door to let her out in time, but she uses her potty pads by the front door.
She’s independent but listens and is starting to obey my verbal commends like, “No bites” and “Stop” when she’s headed somewhere where she doesn’t belong. She’s learning sit and stay commands but is still challenged by deciding to come when I say come. She’s getting much better. She can go outside in our yard without a leash and she stays within her boundaries. She follows me everywhere so it’s usually easy to keep track of her. Betty was like that. She didn’t want me to be out of her sight.
I guess that’s about it for now. I wanted to give the Hazel Fan Club an update. We can’t be happier with her, and she seems to be happy with us too.