Lady socialization update

It's been about six weeks since the adoption of Lady into our family. We have learned a lot about her in the short time she has been with us. Adopting any animal can be a trying time but Lady has adjusted nicely and is taking her time to make incremental, yet positive progress.

She still absolutely adores her canine brother, Charlie. She follows him everywhere and mimics what he does, mirroring both his good and bad habits. Especially when they are outside together, she follows him everywhere.

When Charlie gets overly happy by running and jumping around the house because we are getting him food, Lady now does the same. She wags her tail fiercely, runs to her food dish, and looks at us longingly with her dark-brown eyes. Previously we had to sit next to her and coax her to eat food. Now, she independently scarfs down the food.

While Charlie goes nuts to meet other people, Lady is extremely cautious and cowers when we head her direction. She isn't as frightened as when we first got her but still takes her time. The hilarious part about her is you know that deep down she wants our love and affection because even though she sinks to the floor in our presence, her tail wags back and forth giving away her true feelings. There have been break-through moments where she comes over to me and gives puppy kisses by licking my hand and arm. Or she carefully takes precarious steps towards me and then sits nicely, looking at me, signaling that she wants picked up to snuggle on the couch. And snuggling is her all-time favorite, even if the humans in her life are the ones to initiate it. Charlie and Lady have become good snuggle buddies too.

Once we were able to get Lady to go for walks on a leash, we experienced accelerated progress in her behavior. She loves going for walks and this evening she went over to the box where we keep the dog items and pulled the leash out of it. Tonight, for the first time, while we were on our short walk, she pooped right along with Charlie. This truly is a big deal as she has become accustomed to pooping inside the house because we're working on her signaling when she has to go.

The dog socialization will be a lengthy progress. I look forward to the results and learning Lady's real personality that is buried underneath.

Sibling love

Charlie is absolutely, quite totally, obsessed with his human sister, Lily.

In the morning he will sit outside her bedroom door and wait for us to open it when she wakes. Once in the room, he jumps up to her crib, carefully pressing his cold nose between the bars so that he can get a glimpse of her.

He gets away with much more at mealtime now, pacing below Lily's chair waiting for food to drop his way. He often licks her slimy hands clean.

Lily loves her puppy brother in return. In the mornings when Charlie comes into her room, she looks for him as she hears the tap tap tap of his paws and nails hitting the wood floor. Once she is able to spot him through the bars of her crib, she waves and tries to say his name. It basically comes out as gibberish sounds: aaahhhieeee.

Lily constantly watches Charlie pace below her at mealtime. She antagonizes him by leaning over and drooping one hand down to his level so that he can lick her dirty hands. Once in a while, though, she will also dangle a piece of food in the process despite us telling her and Charlie, "No, no!"

Charlie and Lily love each other. Yet, like all siblings, they regularly irritate one another. This love-irritation can coincide at the same moment. Lily scoots along to wherever Charlie leads her. She tries to grab his hair and pull his tail. When she reaches out to him, he proceeds to incessantly kiss her, licking all over her little face. Her only recourse is to hold up her hands in protest, but he is much too wise for that deflection to stop him. He will finally get the point to stop when Lily lets out her high-pitched-throaty-grunt. Yet when he stops licking, she smiles, and goes after him for more.

It's sibling love at it's finest.

Random racing ruminations: Week 16, Perseverence

WEEK 16

Saturday (4.0 mile run)
Temperature 49 degrees
Mile 1 = 9:15
Mile 2 = 9:04
Mile 3 = 9:32
Mile 4 = 9:31

Sunday (3.0 mile run)
Temperature 38 degrees
Mile 1 = 9:42
Mile 2 = 9:49
Mile 3 = 9:15

I've been dwelling on perseverance lately. In watching Lily learn about the world and observing her experience the most casual of ordinary happenings, I see her persist and persevere on a regular basis.

She has extreme determination to figure out the coordination of her hands adjusting them to push, pull, and grasp the moving parts on her toys.

I know she wants to communicate with us using words but, of course is unable to yet. She experiments with all the different sounds her mouth, throat, tongue, and lips can make.

She flings and flips food in every direction possible to find the fastest and most efficient way to get it in her mouth so that she can develop her novice pallet.

And while I think she could crawl if she really wanted to, watching her on the floor is quite inspiring. Her trial and error of coordinating arms, legs, rocking, kicking, and pulling to accomplish systematic momentum is fantastic. I'm constantly rooting for her, hoping she'll figure it out. Charlie seems to be supporting her in these floor-crawling endeavors. He loves to lay next to her on her blanket and give her puppy kisses as forms of love and encouragement.

Charlie, too, perseveres to accomplish what he wants, mainly food. Lily has become his new favorite person, especially when she is eating because he patiently waits under her chair for all the rejected scraps to drop his way. Watching him persist makes me think of an entirely new definition of determination: starving obsession.

For both Lily and Charlie, perseverance and drive appears to arrive naturally. But I know this isn't always the case in life. As my first week of training for the Lincoln Half-Marathon came to a close this weekend, I had two runs scheduled: one on Saturday and one on Sunday. Saturday's run was almost effortless until howling winds seemed more determined than me. Then Sunday seven in the evening came quickly and I first thought about running. I didn't have any desire to make it happen. When I realized that all my running clothes were in the laundry, I quickly convinced myself that I would run Monday instead. I sat down on the couch feeling bad about myself.

Then some serious self-talk took place.

I went upstairs and pulled out old gross running pants that are now yard work and housework clothes, ones that I've painted in many times and there are various colors of paint flecks covering them. It was dark out already, so who cared what my pants looked like?

I put in my ear buds and began my three mile interval training. It didn't feel good. I couldn't get control of my breathing or how tired my body felt. At just the right time into mile 2 came the wise words from Salt-N-Pepa, Ah, push it (yes, this all-time classic is part of my running playlist), egging me on to adjust my stride and persevere. 

Later at the very end of mile 3, on the last stretch of some terrible interval training, came some even wiser words from Bobby McFerrin, 

In every life we have some trouble

When you worry you make it double

Don't worry, be happy 

I smiled, pleased with my decision to keep at it, sprinting home in weird paint-speckled running pants.

Kisses from puppy brother

Now that I'm a father I have endless blog post topics. Now that I'm a father, the only time I have for said blog topics is a quick note where they get lost on the page with other seemingly great ideas. Maybe I'll have to embrace brevity as my new best friend. And so, in the spirit of that briefness, here is the story of how we brought our healthy daughter, Lily, home from the hospital.

Internet research began long before going into labor, paired by discussions with friends who have paved the way with children and dogs. We discovered scent is everything. I packed one of Lily's future blankets into the bag we took to labor and delivery. We used this blanket for about a day after Lily was born, wrapping her in it as much as possible.

Then, the day before bringing Lily home, I brought the blanket home. Just like any new item we introduce into the house, Charlie must be there to inspect the contents and the blanket was no exception. But it was unlike other new things we've put in the house; the second I let him smell it, he couldn't get enough of it. His tail curved down, still wagging. He buried his nose in the blanket, sniffing. This introduction session could have lasted longer than the duration of five minutes I allowed, but I was on a timeline to shower, grab some necessities, and head back to the hospital.

I walked up the stairs to the bedrooms, blanket in hand, and Charlie right at my heals the entire way. I simply dropped the blanket into the crib in Lily's room. Charlie stood there, smelling, walking around the crib. He returned several times as if to check and ensure the newly scented blanket was still there.

A day and a half later, we put Lily in the Subaru Outback for the first time, giving her the first ride home. Michelle walked into the house first to give Charlie an opportunity to greet her. Then I walked in a moment later, carrying Lily. There is no way to know that Charlie knew Lily was ours, but I'm certain he knew.

He excitedly followed me around the house and I got down to his level so that he could meet his human sister. Immediately he wanted to devour her with love, giving the all-so-famous Charlie licks. He started with her feet and it didn't take long for him to try to do the same on her soft infant head. We put a quick end to his obsessiveness, trying to keep him from going at Lily too quickly or jumping near her.

Now Charlie accepts Lily as part of our family. He is patient with her and with us as we all try to figure out this new way of living with each other. Like the loyal and loving dog he is, Charlie is present every moment, right there, alongside us.

He still loves giving puppy brother kisses to his human sister, licking her cheeks, forehead, arms, hands, and feet. Lily tolerates it with her infant-stink face. And I, too, am often the recipient of that same exact stink face.