THE FIRST FEW MONTHS

I decided to name her Tippy Bleye, because she had a white tip on the end of her tail and, of course, the one blue eye. She goes by Tippy.

I’ll be honest in that I got a little more than I bargained for. One of the reasons I adopted her, and not her sister, is that she was not as rambunctious. I really wasn’t looking for an overly active dog. Well, was I in for a surprise when I realized that she was only sluggish because she had a bad case of worms. Once those were taken care of, the games were on!

The fact that she had so much energy soon grew on me and wouldn’t have it any other way. I loved to see her do what I called her puppy runs….where she would take off running at full speed, run around in circles, try to change directions suddenly and wind up turning a cartwheel, and then doing it all over again.

One thing she did that I didn’t like, was jump on me and anyone else who came to visit. Her little claws were sharp and I wound up having to keep Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide by the door to treat my daily wounds. I must have looked like I’d been in a fight most days.

My first try at getting her to quit jumping was to bop her on the head with a rolled up little magazine every time she did. (I didn’t bop her hard, so there was no pain involved..just wanting to get her attention and know that that was NOT an okay behavior.)  It wasn’t long, though, before this is what I found when I came out into the garage.

I figured if she was smart enough to tear up the magazine, I was smart enough to try something else. So, that was the end of the head bopping. Eventually, I hired a dog behaviorist to help me get her jumping under control.  I found that a lot of it had to do with my body language and energy.  I was finally able to return the Band-Aids and hydrogen peroxide to the medicine cabinet.