its almost the end of the second week that emi has become a part of our ever growing family! i thought it was pretty genius to have a blog function on mycorgi.com. in a way, mycorgi has become such a savior to me these past couple of months! all the preparation for emi, and all the troubleshooting with behaviors and training and miscellaneous things! theres alot of things i cant post on my more personal social outlets like facebook or tumblr, because alot of people really dont understand like mycorgi does -tears; 

regardless, im hoping to update our entire journey with emi on mycorgi, because she is very special to us. she is our first puppy/dog/corgi and we want to be sure to be the most responsible dog owner be can be! 

so this week on emi's journey~ (i sound like a TV announcer :P )

• potty training
  • we started adding on to the time inbetween emi's potty breaks. at her age, she should theoretically be able to hold it for at least 4 hours. this week, we up-ed the time to 3 hours in between potty breaks, and she is having accidents AT LEAST once a day! we're unsure if we should go back to 2.5 hours (what we started with, and she had no accidents at all!) or if we should perservere with 3 hours? (today there was no accidents, but the past 4 days ive been a janitor)
• eating
  • emi is finally starting to eat!! in the beginning, she LOVED wellness just for puppy (the new food i was switching her onto) that she wouldnt even touch her breeders food! it grew to the point where she wouldnt eat wellness AT ALL! shes very picky, and sometimes needs me to hand feed her, but it got to the point where she wouldnt touch it at all ): we went to our local pet food supplier and got a bunch of samples for her! just like wellness, she was very interested at first and loved it! but after a while she wouldnt want to eat it anymore -_______-; to my dismay, emi just wasnt eating! i made the decision to keep her on wellness, and just believed that she wasnt starving herself and was eating enough to sustain herself. anddd believe it or not, shes finally eating!! we leave the wellness out in her crate, and i see that every couple of hours, the food i left out is gone! HALLELUJAH!
• training
  • for training, we decided to teach her how to sit first, which seemed a little weird for us since this was our very first time training emi! what we decided was that my boyfriend, billy, would be training emi because we have another corgi , that we put a deposit on, on the way! so in a way, emi is really billy's dog, and i will train the new dog. we decided it was best this way for more than one reasons. anyways, i digress. we knew that we shouldnt bombard her with all these different things that we wanted to teach her, so we decided the most important things she needed to learn FIRST was to sit, and secondly, get along with our 3 cats! Sit was not too bad after we finally got the hang of it, but trying to get her to get along with the cats was absolutely exhausting! i almost gave up hope, because emi would just keep BARKING AND BARKING and chasing them out of the baby gated room (not that this happens regularly, but did do alot of research prior to their introduction and i did introduce them slowly, over the first week before i even let them be together in the same room). emi just had a huge barking problem in general (barking at cars, joggers, other dogs, her reflection , my cats) so we were at wiits end ): we decided the very last thing we would try was a bark collar. now, dont get me wrong, i am completely 100% against animal cruelty and i truly dont believe in negative reinforcement, but we honestly did not know what to do. the first step was just getting her to stop barking at the cats, so that the cats wouldnt run away. we got a bark collar that vibrated when she barked (not a shock collar or anything). we had very brief 15 minute sessions every day, where she would wear the color and look at a cat. the idea was that she needed to learn that barking at the cats are not okay because when she barks, the cats run and become very scared of her. she very quickly got the idea after the first day!! she stopped barking at the cats (which was all that we wanted) and were able to finally get to know each other without being scared of each other. now they are just peachy! they can be left alone in the room together now, and emi and the cats get along just fine! (: 
  • crate training is going alot better as well, she likes being in there alot more and is starting to run into their to get her toys or to sit, even if its only for 30 seconds! PERSEVERANCE! 
• socialization
  • we noticed that emi has a bit of an aggression towards other dogs. she just doesnt get along with other dogs, much to my dismay ): my bestfriend happened to get a puppy around the same time i did as well, and we brought emi over for a play date! they were alright at first, chasing each other around, but after a while emi got really annoyed of my bestfriends golden retriever, and started barking/growling at him and hiding under the couch away from him ): at that point, i took her home. also when we are outside on a potty break, she barks at every dog that walks past us! a very nice couple with two shitzus came by to say hi to emi and emi jsut kept barking at them T_____T i dont know if i could ever trust her off leash , or take her to a dog park. im at a lost of what to do about dog socialization cause i cant bring her to a dog park until shes finished with her shots ! -lesigh; 
  • emi is usually pretty good about meeting new people ... for the most part @____@ aside from barking at all the joggers, she just cant stop biting! which is a little embarassing for me, because EVERYONEE wants to meet her, and she just wants to chew their faces off @_@ we have alot of different chew toys, bully sticks, raw hides, nylabones, the list goes on! but she still keeps nipping at us! we tried the "OWWWWWWW" technique but she seems to have grown.... apathetic towards it -____-; sometimes we throw her on the bed so she can hang out with us while we are watching TV, and while we are sitting shes usually okay, but if you lay down she will go CRAZYYY on your face and nip you and bite your nose, and paw and dig into your face @_@ sometimes shes okay taking a nap with billy, but sometimes she really just wants to eat your face ! she bites at all my housemates too who come to visit and play with her, shes quite a handful really. 

anyways, thats all for this weeks updates! if anyone ever reads this, thanks for sticking by and i would LOVEE to hear some feedback or advice! :)

"emi, you leave the cats alone!"

just woke her up while she was napping with daddy!