Gracie Month 1

I’m going to try and show Gracie’s progress in both personality and size over the months. So when I say Gracie Month 1, it doesn’t mean she’s a month old. But our first month with her. We adopted her on January 14th, 2012 from the Animal Humane Society in Golden Valley, MN. Her birthday is October 27th, 2011.

Over this month we’ve seen lots of things. First of all, she pretty much arrived potty trained. She has still never (knock on wood) had an accident in her kennels. She goes almost every time we let her out. Unless Charlie happens to have killed something and left it in the yard. Then she gets a little distracted. I followed her out one day to find her ear-deep in a rabbit stomach. That’s when we started to learn “leave it”.

Just yesterday, I had to pull a dead (long dead, we’re talking almost turned to paper) mouse from her mouth. Twice. Joy. She’s getting better at “leave it”, she knows what it means (as well as “drop it”) but she doesn’t really want to comply.

She is becoming a real stinker. As in the case of the mouse above, I kicked it away from her and hid it under some leaves. I think I only succeeded in making the game more fun. She quickly dug it back up when I went to check on the other dog. She’s really become a digger. She loves to unearth poops in the yard. She’s not picky. Rabbit, cat, dog, her own…anything!

She is also learning how to sneak things she’s not supposed to have and when we say, “What do you have in your mouth?” she stops chewing as if to say, “Um, nothing.” then as soon as we turn our head she’s chewing again.

The most recent trait I’ve seen is that when she spots something she wants (as in, a cat) she hunkers down really low, ears back and starts slinking. [Like this] I’ve never had a dog that’s done that before. But then again, I’ve never lived with a herder.

She’s also exhibiting the lovely herding quality of biting ankles. so far, only Fozzie’s. It’s going to be really fun to watch her try and herd the cats.

Another “herding” thing she does is make piles of all her toys. She will go find one, play with it where it is for a little while and it seems if it passes the test it goes into her pile.

She also is showing some “foxy” behavior. She likes to play with [this cat toy] and when she sees the ball spin around she rears up and pounces on it. Very cute. That ball is never coming out of there, but don’t tell her that. It keeps her busy for a long time!

We took her DNA sample last weekend and sent it in, so I’ll let you know when I find out what breeds are in there. I’m going to guess Cattle Dog (Australian Shepherd) and Border Collie.

Here are some photos of her growth. I have more that I can’t get to right now, and I’ll make a slide show once I have them all edited.