This will be Savannah's first Thanksgiving... we will have to give her some turkey and I'm sure she won't refuse. My husband has already introduced Savannah to sliced deli-turkey when he makes himself a sandwich so Savannah will surely like the roasted Butterball. When Gary makes a turkey and cheese sandwich, he now has an audience of two... both Sweet Pea and Savannah will sit behind him and watch what he's doing up on the kitchen counter... and both expect to be rewarded with bits of sliced turkey. And of course they are, even though my husband and I both said that feeding people-food to the cats and Savannah isn't exactly a good thing to do. Well... before dog-food companies hit the billion-dollar mark on their yearly sales, that's all there was for pets--- people-food.
Today was a busy day... cleaning in the morning, then grocery shopping and other errands in the afternoon. Even so, I walked Savannah twice this morning and twice this afternoon... both times her huge fluffy tail was up like a flag and blowing in the breeze. This puppy does indeed love to walk, although I imagine she would love it even more if she wasn't wearing a leash.
I sometimes wonder if Savannah gets bored when I'm too busy to play with her, like today. The walking doesn't constitute play-time, and on my busy days like this, Savannah tends to play with her toys, chew on her rawhide bones and pigs' ears, and nap, nap, nap. Thankfully, Savannah does love her puppy bed. For the money it cost, she should love it, but you never know with puppies. We had bought Gracie a puppy bed years ago but she hardly ever used it because she was always up on the real bed with us, even though Gary and I said "No dogs on the bed!" Well, that rule lasted about twenty minutes... and Gracie was smart... she jumped up on that bed as if she owned it and cuddled up next to her hero and Gary said "Well, we'll let her stay for a few minutes but then she has to get down." Well... ha-ha to that one.... a few minutes lasted a good many years, until we got a new bed and a higher mattress and by that time Gracie's legs were too old to make such a jump and she slept on a blanket on the floor next to my husband's side of the bed.
Savannah has still not ventured up to the second floor of our house. She will watch us go upstairs at night, but she must know that it's time for sleep because she will just walk into the breakfast room and settle down in her bed and that's that. No whining at the bottom of the stairs, no barking at the trains and the coyotes during the night, not a whimper or a roar from this puppy and both she and I are sleeping like babies now.
Sweet Pea seems to have accepted the fact that he now has to share the first floor of the house with a non-feline. Savannah will only chase Sweet Pea if he ventures too close to her water and food bowls or if he happens to forget the 'puppy rules' and run across the kitchen. For some reason, a running cat is more prone to be chased by a puppy than a cat walking slowly from point A to point B. Savannah clearly just wants to play, and possibly the running makes her think about the dog park, where all the dogs are running and running and running. I don't think any of the dogs in that park just meander along the grass and take in the scenery... they all seem to run like mad to see who can out-run everyone else.
As I type, Savannah is in the TV room and I can hear her chewing on one of her rawhide bones. She loves those things, and I've been looking for the healthiest ones I can find. There was one brand of chew-bone that had a label on the front of the package which said "Allow Dog to Chew on an Easy-To-Clean Surface." Well, what the heck did that mean? Would the color of the bones come off on carpeting? Would the bones be crushed to smithereens by a puppy's teeth resulting in zillions of rawhide shards being permanently embedded in carpet fibers? Needless to say, I didn't buy that particular brand.
I've stopped buying stuffed animals for Savannah now... she has real teeth now, not itty-bitty puppy teeth, so the plush toys were barely lasting a day or two. All except the blue monkeys, which are still her favorite. I've lost count as to how many of those we have bought since September 12th, but clearly Savannah does love those monkeys (sort of heavy a chenille fabric, made for dogs) and she doesn't chew them to bits. The blue monkeys get carried around from the TV room to the kitchen, back to the breakfast room, into the TV room again, and there have been days when Savannah has tried to keep her current blue monkey in her mouth while I'm putting on her leash to go out for a walk. I've told Savannah that the blue monkey has to stay in the house because he doesn't like to walk on the road. I doubt very much that Savannah understands a word of that, but she does indeed understand the word "No!" and she will leave the monkey by the back door when we're on our way out and then pick it up as soon as we get into the house again.
Savannah just walked into the breakfast room... she saw me typing at my laptop here and she turned herself around and went back into the TV room and I can hear her chewing on that rawhide again. I think that was a subtle hint.... I should go in there and play with her for a while and then brush her. Savannah dearly loves to be brushed, and I think she even knows how pretty she looks when her hair is bright and shiny and brushed and just-so. Gary calls her the puppy-diva, and he's probably right.
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