MISS LACEY - DAY 3

If you're wondering why Miss Lacey is looking so proud this morning, its because she made it down ALL five flights of stairs on her own!

We had another good/easy night.  She has no problem sleeping through the night.  I'm finding she is quite the cuddler and really likes human contact.  If she is near me, she likes to be touching me.  (Yes, we were spooning again)

So 7:30 this morning we are getting ready for our morning run/walk and this is the first time I have seen Lacey actually get excited and start wagging her tail.  I immediately tried to take advantage of that energy and we headed out the door.

The first set of stairs was no problem, but Lacey got a little scared for the second set.  Worried that we were going to make no progress this morning, I sat down on the stairs to let Lacey work through her fear and potentially move forward on her own accord.  After 5-10 minutes I decided to get up and try to get some momentum going.  I started walking back upstairs and she started to follow.  FAKE AND REDIRECT THE PUP!!  I turned around and took the momentum we gained to go downstairs.  After the second set, I made sure she was near the wall and not the railings, and she had no problem.  Five flights later, we were outside and she was ready to run!

She's a very strong dog and tends to start each walk with the intention of walking me.  She's a puller, but I have found that if I run her for 5-10 minutes right away, she calms down and will walk comfortably with me.  After our starter jog, I took her into the park for a run in the snow.  She quickly went 1 & 2 and then decide to run around a little more.  I would love to see this girl in a yard.  I think if she had space that she knew was hers, she would run all over the place.  This little girl loves the outdoors almost as she loves sleeping on my bed.

On what is becoming the "norm" now, Lacey had no problems getting back to my apartment.  Up the stairs is the easy part.  We did, however, run into one of my neighbors on the stairs.  This startled her, but didn't cause her to freeze up.

Lacey has yet to eat in front of me.  She seems to like when I pull out the bag of food, but doesn't react once it is prepared.  This comes as a BIG shock to me as my previous Ridgeback experience made me think that RR's were VERY food driven.  My dog-pal Gemma, Oritte's monkey Ridgeback, would be on her food dish so fast that she would take off a hand if you weren't paying attention. The plus side is that Lacey IS eating.  She just does it on her own time.

Leaving for work today was hard.  Lacey was trying to convince me to snuggle on the couch with her.  I politely declined and told her we are going to hang out this evening.   Needless to say, we are both looking forward to it.