Merry Christmas!

Secret has survived her first Christmas! :o)

Christmas Eve was held at my parent's house with my dad's side of the family. We were expecting about 28 people, so I decided it would probably be best to not bring all three dogs along. Instead, Secret got to come all by herself for her "coming out" party.

In short, I think she found it incredibly overwhelming. She definitely had very little interest in having people pet her, which is quite out of character for her. Secret was, however, more than willing to show off her tricks to anyone who might be willing to give her a bite of food. She was particularly fond of my grandpa, due to his reputation of spoiling dogs rotten.

She got much better by the end of the night. My uncle got right down on the floor with her for a while and she really warmed up to him & my aunt after a short time (including toys).



One would have thought that after a few hours of all that activity, Secret would have crashed upon coming home. Not quite! She was ecstatic to see the boys and ended up running laps around the couch for an hour. lol

Christmas day was much easier on Secret. We again went to my parents house (all three dogs this time) and spent the day with only my parents and my brother's family (which includes three kids, a new experience for Secret). She did incredibly well all day. I consider the fact that we didn't have any accidents in a new house a huge success!

We always try to take a family picture at Christmas. After that was done, I asked my dad to take a "family picture" of me and the dogs. I failed to EVER get a photo of me, Kaiser & Luke over the past two years, so I didn't want to let that happen again now with the three dogs. The photo at the top is the result!

I left the dogs home that evening to go to Christmas dinner with my mom's side of the family. The dogs were home alone for about five hours or so. Secret's chewie must have fallen out of the kennel, because I found the remains of it on the other side of the couch. Poor Secret! To make it up to her, this morning I gave her a Dingo all her own and made the boys watch her eat it. ;o)

We came into work today to let the dogs run around for a while. We had a terrible ice storm and the back yard is horrible right now. It's quite icy at work, but at least it's flat and the dogs can run. We'll likely come in to do the same tomorrow.

No trick training the last few days with the rush of the holidays -- we'll have to get back on that soon!! Secret got tons of practice with the family, though, and happily showed off: Sit, down, shake, high-five, speak, bow & roll over. Yay! Good girl! Everyone was massively impressed.