Just found two additional photos of Stevie on my iPhone. One is a little fuzzy, but shows she's still so inquisitive about electronics. The other is a recreation of a photo that I took on the day Megan brought Stevie home from Waco. Stevie's a *little* bit bigger, but not much.

I looked back in the Gallery, though, and don't find that photo, so I'll dig around and see if I can find it so we can all compare...

Have a great 2009. And stay tuned for more updates.

Cheers,
G

I know, I know, it's been a REALLY long time since I've blogged about Stevie. Let me assure you that she is as cute, funny, smart, clever, mischevious and hilarious as ever as she enters her third year of life with "Megan, the Cat Person".

Stevie is very quick to learn. Megan has been working with her on their walks so that Stevie has to "sit/stay" whenever Megan stops. At first, she worked on it without distractions (no pedestrians, no busy street corners, no cars). Being an astute student (and a big time lover of Newman's Own Dog Treats), Stevie soon advanced to performing "sit/stay" with noisy trucks going by, busy street corners, and gaggles of school children across the way. More impressively, when I had her lead on a recent walk, I stopped, and Stevie immediately sat and stayed, without a command. In fact, she did it so well, I almost tripped over her when I turned to begin walking again. I told Megan that maybe she should come train MY dogs -- and I'm the one who's been to dog training school.

I thought I had more recent photos, but could only find one to add to the gallery. It's actually of Stevie dutifully sitting, and, most likely, wondering if this will be one of the "treat times" or one of the "no treat times".

I went to visit Megan and Stevie today, the first day of 2009. Megan and I were having a veggie tray and pretzels and Stevie just can't understand why Mom doesn't allow her to have whatever she wants. I mean, come on, dogs are people, too. If Stevie doesn't behave well while we are eating, Megan sternly tells her: "Stevie, go get in your crate". And darned if Stevie doesn't comply, although not always happily, and not without peeking out every now and then to see if her exile has been lifted.

Megan says Stevie must have something against her little snuggle bed (the same kind we all use for the pups to curl up in). It has been in her large crate ever since Megan bought it. However, lately, Stevie has been dragging it out of her crate on a routine basis. Nearly every day when Megan comes home from work, the little snuggle bed is in the middle of the hallway. Megan puts it back and the next day, there it will be, dragged into the hall, sometimes upside down. One afternoon, Megan was working on the computer and she heard a bunch of rummaging sounds, then felt a familiar bumping on her leg. She looked over, and there sat Stevie, obviously pleased with herself, having dragged the snuggle bed out of her crate, down the short hallway, into Megan's room. Far be it from me to try to fathom the workings of a tiny, blind Min Pin's brain.

I will try to be more vigilant about the blog and new photos in this new year. I know there will be many, many more stories to come.

Happy 2009 and cheers until then,
G

I visited Megan and Stevie today. That dog has so much energy, I swear, it wears me out just watching her play.

She has a funny little "dance" that she does when she thinks you are taking too long to throw a toy or give her a treat. We call it "footie, footie, footie". I don't know how to explain it other than a rapid shifting from one front foot to the other, rather like an impatient child stamping its feet. It's actually quite hilarious and almost impossible not to laugh when she does it.

She is persistent, intuitive and smart. Even though she is blind, we routinely play "fetch" (or "go find (fill in the blank with name of toy here)"), tell her to find a certain toy - she will come back with the correct toy almost every time, and when she doesn't, it's usually because said toy is missing or in a very strange place. (You'd be amazed where things end up sometimes...)

She still has Lucy (orange rubber ball with horns and feet), the original one that Megan bought her as one of her first toys. Stevie loves Lucy and likes to make her stand up on her feet. Really too funny.

She still has a penchant for keys and ran off with mine today to hide them in her crate. But, for the first time, we asked her to bring the keys back and to our surprise and delight, she did!

I have uploaded several new photos today so you can enjoy looking at her as much as I did. What a funny, funny dog she is. And what a joy in spite of her full blown Min Pin mischievousness.

More to come as time allows. Cheers, G

Stevie is as funny, energetic and cute as ever. Also, very smart!

Megan has been working with Stevie on "sit" and "stay" when they are on walks. The idea is to get Stevie to pay attention and perform on command even with the outside distractions of traffic, other dogs barking, people walking by, or birds chirping. Megan is always so excited to report on her progress.

(Don't forget that Megan is a long-time Psychology teacher.) They have been taking progressively longer walks and introducing different experiences. Stevie is getting quite good at the sit/stay, even with lots of outside influences. Megan uses treats for training, but does not always provide a treat every time, but rather on a random basis. It seems to be working very well, as she demonstrated while I was there visiting.

In fact, she has done such a great job, I told her she needed to come out to my house and train my three...

Megan has always been an architect and designer at heart. When she was struggling with everything else in high school, she excelled in drafting and even got a summer job working for a custom pool/landscape firm. All that background just to set this scene: Megan has decided to create a city from a video game with Lego pieces. While she has a lot of Lego pieces collected from years of putting things together, many more are needed to complete a project of this magnitude. So she has been getting bits and pieces of different kits in the mail. One day, she received a package of miscellaneous items and had opened it to do an inventory of pieces. She was about to sit down and write a stern email to the seller because something was missing when she realized that Stevie was nowhere to be found.


Megan looked around and found Stevie in her favorite "hiding" place, her crate in the bathroom. She was chewing on something. Megan chased her out of the room then emptied out her crate. There, amidst the bedding and sundry other toys, were the missing items - some plastic Lego swords. Some had escaped unscathed, but a couple of them (see Gallery) were damaged by two-year-old Miniature Pinscher teeth.


The small separate package of swords must have fallen out of the main box when Megan was opening it. She will, of course, be much more vigilant of wayward Lego pieces from now on.


More later... G