This is what I have to deal with all day. More photos from that series in Zoe’s Gallery.

Well, the first victim of puppy teeth: my phone cord.

Jojo was out in the living room with Zoe and I for a good while, sleeping on a chair in the corner. He doesn’t mind Zoe at all. But alas I had to let Zeeke loose at some point. Jojo didn’t move, which surprized me… well, for five minutes at least. Then he ran into the kitchen when Zeeke wasn’t looking. Not surprizing.

Until I take the dogs out. Zeeke first, then I change up for Zoe. Outside again. When we come back in, as I’m taking off Zoe’s leash, I get a shock: Jojo, laying curled up in the papasan chair. I don’t know if Zeeke notices or not. But either way, that’s a huge step for Jojo!

Yesterday was another accident-free day. And this morning she woke me up by whining, then sat at the bedroom door, anxious for me to take her out. Go Zoe!!

This is just a journal to hopefully catalogue all the little details about Zoe - things that get lost in other places. As always, it is read at your own risk.

I’ll be importing entries from other journals - or writing out things I never wrote down, and pre-dating them for reference.

As for potty training… Zoe has “chosen” a certain spot in the house where she has accidents. That’s due to a lot of things, but generally indicates to me that the cleaner isn’t working superbly well. However I am not complaining for two reasons: First, it’s on hardwood and not, say, the couch that has gotten peed on about 4 or 5 times already. (Seriously, the other day there were only 2 cushions on the couch at any one time, because soon as one dried, another was peed on. It was not a good day for the couch. This is hopefully no longer a problem because today she decided she can jump off the couch herself… and is no longer stuck on the couch needing to pee.) Second, because now I watch her extra carefully whenever she goes near the “pee spot”. Unfortunately the pee spot is the doorway of the kitchen, which is gated, which is where the cat likes to sit on the other side. So sometimes when she’s hovering it’s because she’s staring at the cat. Other times, she’s going to pee. But now when I see her sniffing around the floor and heading in that direction…. out the door, missy!! We’ve done really well today. Only one accident. (I think it was only one?) And it was only a half-one, because I turned and saw her just as she was peeing and gave a shout that interrupted her. The first few days it felt like I was always 2 minutes too late getting her out the door… I’d be watching her and watching the time and think, “Okay, I’ll just finish this bite of food and then I’ll take her out,” and she’d pee… or she’d go as I was getting her leash. Rather frustrating. But today I’ve managed to keep on top of it, I take her out when it’s 90% certain she’ll have to go (like after eating or sleeping), and whisk her outside when she shows any signs of it. And the reason I missed it the once was because she was still playing with Zeeke… she just took a brief interlude to pee on the floor. Gah.

So like I said, today she finally realized she can jump off the couch just fine. She jumped up there on day one (she has some legs on her, she’ll be good at agility), but then would stand there and whine and wiggle when wanting to get down. At times when she really wanted down and didn’t stop to think about it, she could and would jump down on her own. However most of the time she’d hesitate and not think she could do it. Today, I guess she just decided she wasn’t waiting any longer.

I took her to Petco today, which may or may not have been a good idea. I just wanted to go out with just her, and I needed to go to Petco anyways. Well unfortunately she freaked inside the store. She wouldn’t move. *sigh* She’s a tad too heavy to carry everywhere (well, more just bulky and awkward), so I had to put her in one of the carts. She didn’t enjoy that much, but more than being forced to walk. (Well, she ended up cramming herself onto a shelf and not coming out.) But hopefully the more she gets exposed to that sort of thing the better it’ll go. I know Oreo was always very fearful of everything and it contributed to her being somewhat fear-aggressive. It took her 10 years to get over that. LOL I don’t intend to wait that long again. Thankfully Zoe is fine with people - it’s just noises and big scary objects that freak her out. She must be knee-deep in a fear-stage at this age.