Today's Ofelia's first birthday. I'll have to postpone the dog park trip until tomorrow because I have to go to work. She woke up really excited this morning. I guess she felt my excitement. It's a beautiful day today and I'm going to take her for extra walks. I think I'll email her breeder and send her a picture. I'll also be celebrating the first day Oafie and I met pretty soon, and then the first day I brought her home. Here's to many many more birthdays in good health and good spirits for… Continue

This past Easter weekend I drove up with Ofélia and my boyfriend to visit my family, and to stay and my parents’ place for a couple of days. I knew that my mother was taking care of one of my sister’s 3 huskies because she was healing from a neck wound – she was attacked. This husky is a few months old and weighs about 40 pounds. She won’t get more than about ten pounds bigger as she’s a runt, but she’s large enough to overpower my 25-pound corgi.



Now I should have remembered that… Continue

I have one of those wonderfully flexible jobs where I work between an office 15 minutes away and my desk at home. When I'm away, Ofelia does great in her crate. She has toys and there and she usually naps. When I'm home, Ofelia gets bored very quickly. She doesn't understand that I'm not ignoring her because I want to but because I have a lot of work to do. So my back is to her most of the day. I try to give her time (and I'll admit I don't get outside with her as often as I can, except for the… Continue

It's been a hectic week, so I haven't been able to write this post. Last Friday, my boyfriend and I were in a car accident. It's the first crash I've ever been in, and I'm still reeling from it. We were in Maryland for Matt's brother's wedding, which was the next day, and for which Matt was the best man. We were going through one of those blinking intersections around 11 at night. We had the blinking yellow, and a pickup ran the blinking red. Matt barely had time to slam on his breaks before we… Continue

Today was Ofelia's third trip to the dog park. Her second time went great! She had so much fun! After a couple of minutes' hesitation, she jumped right in and had fun. Then today, it was even better. She didn't hesitate at all. I wish she had a dog her own size to play with, though. All of the dogs there are much larger than her - twenty to sixty pounds heavier. The smallest one is another 5 month old puppy that has about 15 pounds on her. They love each other, but the size difference is pretty… Continue

I took Ofelia to the dog park for the first time today. It's a small dog park in my apartment community. There were about ten other dogs there. When I brought her in and took her leash off, they all went for her, and she jumped right through an opening between the fence post and the storage building. So I had to get her back, and bring her back in. I didn't want to overexpose her, but I knew from watching them that these were all stable dogs, so we tried again. And after about 20 minutes she… Continue

I wish I had gotten this on video tape. Today, we took Ofelia's Elizabethan collar off. We left it on the floor and forgot about it. A few minutes later, I walked into the other room. And I was just about to say how it was so weird to see her without the collar on, when she walked into my line of vision, and there she was with the collar back on. I laughed and said to Matt, "You put it back on?" And he said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "You put her collar back on," and I brought her into… Continue

So last night we had a scare with Ofelia. Her incision from her spay a couple of days ago started bleeding pretty badly. So we bandaged her up and took her to the pet emergency clinic (it was 1 in the morning). The doctor said everything was fine. That she probably licked open the skin glue that was holding the skin in place. I was really relieved. I thought she was hemorrhaging. But everything looks fine. The doctor cleaned her up, put some new glue on, and - poor Ofie - put an elizabethan… Continue

Poor Ofelia got spayed today. I brought her back from the vet a few hours ago, gave her some pain medication and laid down with her for a little while. Poor thing seems like she's in a lot of discomfort. She can barely even walk. She's doing very well, though. She's a real trooper. A good bit of whimpering, but not a lot of crying. They said she was really milking it at the vet's before I picked her up. She also got the last of her puppy vaccines, her rabies shot, and an ID microchip. So it was… Continue

Ofelia was the only tricolor in her litter. Both of her parents are red and whites. But according to her lineage, she has a great-grandfather I believe it was who was a tri. She was born on April 21, 2008, to a breeder in Pennsylvania, and I brought her home 8 weeks later. She was a gift for my graduating college, so I was really surprised. I hadn't even planned on owning a dog for a while. I can barely afford her, but I wouldn't give her away for the world.



She was born a natural… Continue

Ofelia loves to run circles around the apartment. I can't imagine what it sounds like to the neighbors downstairs, her rapid pitter patter. She gets so excited. She's actually at her most annoying when she's excited. She jumps and barks and nips, and when I try to discipline her she thinks it's a game. Then it makes me laugh and she goes running off again.



I finally got my first post-college job. And once I've saved enough money, I'm going to put Ofie in herding classes. I already… Continue