The life of Riley

Whew, what a whirlwind! We've had Riley home with us for about 6 weeks now and I feel like I'm just coming up for air. It's been good. It's been fun. But we're also exhausted and a little overwhelmed, trying to figure out our new schedule and routine. Especially with a new school year starting and crazy work schedules. We've made so much progress, but we've also had some setbacks. Overall though, I think we're finally getting to a pretty good place with this puppy of ours :)

She sits, she lays down, she plays fetch, and she'll come to a target. She's pretty good about letting us know when she needs to go outside (though she did randomly have 2 accidents last week without giving us any sort of warning). We're still working on the jumping, nipping, and chewing, though all 3 of those things have definitely gotten better. And she still has no idea how to act around other dogs. Sometimes she's totally scared, other times she gets growly, and other times she wants to play. Who knows ...

Another day. Another stick. 

It's taken a little while, but I'm finally starting to get comfortable with being a dog mom. There were a few times in the beginning when she would start nipping at me and I would just go hide in another room. Ha! Now I feel like I can usually make a pretty good guess as to what she wants. And I think I've earned her love after about a million games of tug of war.

The Molly-Riley relationship is a little more complicated. Molly is definitely over her fear of dogs. Yay, mission accomplished! She loves Riley ... sometimes. Other times, she's totally indifferent, or even annoyed that the dog gets so much of our attention. I think Riley has caught on and is now nipping at Molly a little more than she used to. We'll need to work on that.

But that's what training is for! Thank goodness for Kiki, dog trainer extraordinaire. (Check out her website for a few videos of Riley in action). She has taught me so much over the last few weeks. Probably even more than she's taught the dog :)