I can't believe it's just been a week since Sara came into our lives!
We are having the best time getting to know her. Even though she is three years old, she is so puppyish in her behaviour! She loves her squeaky toys - sadly, loves destroying them, about one a day - so we went out and got a good supply of them today. We took her to my vet in Brantford last Tuesday to get her checked out, including a full blood workup, and she passed with flying colours! He cautioned us that the lenses of her eyes show some thickening, which might mean cataracts in the future, but he encouraged us not to worry about it. So I won't. There's nothing wrong with her vision now - and thanks to Muffin's eye problems, I know two great ophthalmic vets if Sara needs cataract surgery down the road.
It's been such a joy to watch her growing in confidence! Since
she passed the vet test, we've taken her for a walk each day. There's a wonderful park alongside Bowmanville Creek, with a nice, wide asphalt path but grass and plantings just beyond. Up until now, she was quite content to make her way along the path. This evening, wet though it was, she decided that her place was in the underbrush and she stopped to sniff at everything. It seemed like a real breakthrough.
Also, she's terrific with us but tends to be shy with other people. Again tonight, she was quite happy to sniff noses with a couple of other dogs, and she wagged her little tail at a woman who bent down to speak to her.
And speaking of wagging her tail - she does it pretty much nonstop from when she gets up in the morning to when she goes to bed at night. If you look carefully at the last of the photos I've attached, you'll see that her tail is moving so quickly that it's almost invisible. The first night we had her, she was intrigued at the sound of the trains, which are distant but can still be heard from our place. Today, we had a couple of thunderstorms, and she didn't care about them in the least.
We introduced her to my family at Easter. She was as good as gold with my brother's 7-year-old niece but was intimidated by the crowd - unfortunately, she growled at my dear brother who would so like her to like him - but once she's more settled, I can work with her to try to build her confidence with other people. I'll tell you, seeing her flying around here, you would never guess that she is a dog who could be intimidated by anything or anyone!
Oh, and in the course of getting ready for Easter, I discovered that Sara loves pears. I dropped a slice on the floor as I was cooking, and my little shadow gobbled it up - and the subsequent one I gave her. In fact, I threw the cores out in the garden for the squirrels, and she was determined to get them. Because there's conflicting information on the Internet about the toxicity of pear seeds for dogs, I ended up scooping them up until she was nowhere about, but the next couple of times she went out, she checked to see whether I'd missed any.
She's been a bit reluctant to eat either of the brands of kibble I've been feeding her, so the best thing about discovering she likes fruit is that a teaspoonful of unsweetened applesauce encourages her to devour her kibble and lick the bowl afterwards. So that issue is resolved!
All the best,
Dianne
