Lily at nine months: Diary of a Foster Failure

Dec 27, 2012

This little nugget of a dog came into my life June 18th, 2011. Lily is now nine months and her sweet and out-of-this-world adorable face is her only saving grace.  At nine months Lily is still having accidents.  When she needs to go, she just goes without warning. She will wake us up in the middle of the night from time to time when she needs to go, but otherwise has to go out every three hours at least during the day.  She’s fine in her crate in terms of walking right in and not whining, but if she’s in there longer than four hours she’ll go to the bathroom in her crate.

*Quick note…she’s now 38 pounds! The vet says she needs to be around 40 lbs and she should be full grown! Hooray for a “pocket pit!” She was just 12 pounds the day I found her and half the size of Baxter!

She still is a champion “shaker” and “sitter” and is really good now at “wait.”  But for the life of me I can’t seem to teach her to “come.”

If she gets out of your sight for more than five minutes, chances are she’s eating something she’s not supposed to.  Christmas day…I finally got a pair of Ugg boots! They had three buttons on one side. I set them down to take a photo in front of the tree and not a minute later did I hear Lily crunching on something.  She had chewed off one of the buttons!  The next day she found a stuffed Santa and decided Santa did not bring her enough gits so she ripped him up.  She drags my underwear out of the dirty clothes and shreds them.  She has figured out how to jump up on the counters.  She has scaled the retaining wall in the backyard twice.  She can be wild and rambunctious and make me want to drop her back off on the bench where I found her six months ago at times.  But darn it, I love her and she is MY dog!  There is a long road ahead for us and there is definitely some professional training in our future, but she is my dog and I love her.