... and not by Savannah... these are lessons she is teaching me. Just as this puppy has to learn to trust both my husband and myself, we have to learn to trust that she is trying very hard to be good, and for the most part (like 99.9%) she has been extremely good.
I've come to the conclusion that Savannah likes to have a pillow under her chin when she sleeps. She quickly taught me that lesson because when I fixed the blankets in her crate for the first time, she promptly used her paws to scrape together a mound of the blanket to make a pillow-ish circle big enough to fit her head. So now when I arrange a fresh blanket in her crate, I double- or triple-up one end of it so she has a crate-wide pillow for herself. It seems to work because she doesn't attempt to re-do the folds. (However, she does manage to hide treats and Milk Bones between the layers without disrupting the pillow.)
When Savannah naps, which is quite often on a hot day, she will take one of her toys (usually the blue monkey or the white bunny, toss it in the air a few times, and then wherever it lands, that's where she will sleep, with her head on the stuffed animal. Voila! Instant pillow! This puppy is a southern belle at heart... she knows exactly what she wants and aims to get it in the most gentle of ways.
Savannah's food dishes are in a little corner by the kitchen fridge... out of the way, both water and food bowls sitting on pretty cloth place-mats that just happen to be the same green color as the kitchen tiles. (Presentation is everything.) On her first couple of days with us, Savannah was so hungry that she gobbled up all of her food from that spot in the kitchen. (Which led me to believe that the other puppy with her -- the male from that same litter -- was the more dominant of the two and was more in control of everything in their kennel.
When Savannah realized that she didn't have to share her food with anyone, or wait till another puppy was finished eating, she didn't run to the food bowl the minute I set it down on the kitchen floor. She would look at the bowl of food, then walk calmly into the breakfast room and sit down.... the same room where she had seen my husband and I eating our own meals. She doesn't bother us when we eat, but surely she can smell the food when I put it on the little table-for-two that's in the breakfast room. I had a feeling that Savannah didn't want to eat in the kitchen... maybe she thinks the kitchen is for preparing and the breakfast room is for eating. I would see her sitting quietly on the rug in the breakfast room while her food dish was waiting for her in the kitchen... and she was looking at me with those great big puppy eyes of hers. She definitely has her mother's Great Pyrenees eyes.
Non dog-lovers would say I am spoiling her, but what the heck.... that's one of the reasons people have pets. I picked up Savannah's food bowl and brought it into the breakfast room and set it down right in front of her. Without hesitation, Savannah ate her food that day, and she's been eating all of her meals in the breakfast room ever since. (I am such a sucker for puppy eyes.)
During one of our trips to the numerous pet shops when we were looking for Savannah's bed, I came across packages of "Pet Wipes" --- sort of a hand-wipe like those made for people, but the pet wipes are a bit larger, and the liquid in them isn't toxic to dogs and cats. I bought the wipes for Savannah, and I've been using them on her fur every day so she doesn't smell like a barnyard when she comes into the house after our walks. There are enough cows and goats and horses around here and their odors get in the air and on the grasses and when everyone has their hay cut, all of that blows around and every property gets to smelling like livestock is raised right outside every back door. The pet wipes help a lot to eliminate most, if not all, of that odor, and Savannah doesn't seem to mind them. She was enjoying her rub-down last night so much that she rolled over on the carpet and was laying there belly-side-up, which just about broke my heart because at that moment, I knew she trusted me implicitly. I could have just kissed her on her puppy nose at that point, but I wanted to finish up with the wipes so her fur would smell like lavender instead of goats.
The UPS truck came into our driveway earlier today, to deliver the order from Flint River Ranch, a pet food company in Georgia which specializes in foods baked with all natural ingredients. No fillers, and no kidding. I used to order the same dog food when we had Gracie years ago, and it helped to keep her insides healthy and her fur glowing for 15 years. What was good enough for Gracie is certainly good enough for Savannah. The UPS driver walked up on the porch with the box, set it down by the back door and proceeded to walk away. No sooner had he gotten to the top of the stairs, however, and Savannah let out an enormous roar, probably scaring the shorts off the UPS driver, poor guy. I was sitting in the breakfast room at the time, and heard the truck, knew what the delivery was, but I just sat there to see what Savannah would do. Needless to say, this puppy passed that test with flying colors. What a great dog. Just great.
As a reward for her diligence in keeping the UPS delivery guy on his best behavior, I let Savannah stay out of her crate when I had to drive into town for an hour this afternoon. I had taken her for a walk, she was pretty tired from both walking and seeing two of the neighbors along the way, so I figured she may as well just sleep outside the crate rather than inside the crate. Besides that, my husband was home, and I asked him to keep an ear tuned to the kitchen and breakfast room, just in case Savannah got curious about something up on a table or a counter-top. I left her a couple of dog biscuits, told her I was leaving, and off I went.
When I got back, she was still sleeping, but some of her toys had been taken out of her bed and her crate, and they must have been tossed up in the air because the blue monkey was on the kitchen floor, the brown monkey was on the wood floor of the breakfast room, and the white bunny was underneath Savannah's chin. (Presentation is everything.)
I keep having to remind myself that this five-and-a-half-month-old puppy, who is already Gracie-sized, is still a puppy and not a full-grown dog. She will get much bigger as she grows towards her adult weight-estimate of 80 pounds, and I would bet the ranch that she will be just as gentle and sweet when she's a dog as she has been for us as a puppy. (Except of course, towards UPS drivers and other strangers who go bump in the night --or day-- on the porch.)
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