Three weekends

Keeper's been here three weekends. She has tested positive on a spot test for Anaplasmosis, but seems very healthy and happy, so I've had the vet send off blood for further testing. Since the spot test is an antibody test, it may be cross reacting. Or we may have caught it early. I should know more this coming week. The treatment, a month of Doxycycline, is hard on young dogs, so even if she's positive, we may hold off treatment until there's some symptoms.

She's an absolute champ for blood draws and vaccinations. She's learning "sit" and "come" and so much more. She's a joy to live with, and I'm almost used to her hair (which has nothing to do with combing some 3 grocery bags of hair off of her.....) I'm not used to the sliming, yet, and we're still working on when she's allowed to put her mouth on me in play (not nearly as much as she'd like.)

She went with me to my shrink appointment, as my awesome shrink had offered to help train the SDIT after Strider. She went right up to her reflection in a glass door, sat politely in the lobby, explored a little, then sacked out in the office.

We started the very beginnings of "go to mat" today, and she did really, really well. I was setting the bar at "look at the towel" and by the end she was walking over to the towel and sitting on it. Duncan liked the training time, too, as he was in a down-stay on his own mat, with a semi-regular stream of hot dog bits headed his way.

Keeper's general trend is a good one. She seems interested and engaged, is easily re-directed, and picks things up faster than I'd hoped. She is showing more interest in thrown toys, so training "fetch" might be easier than I hoped.

Also, she snores. It's not chainsaw bad, it's more man in a recliner/very heavy breathing cute.

It's hard to believe Friday was the 3 week mark. She just melted into our lives seamlessly. Here's hoping everything goes this smoothly.

Keeper grins at the camera.