We went to visit grandma and grandpa this weekend. Hubbers had a birthday on Thursday and his dad had one on Friday. My mom also had one on Saturday along with hubber’s grandmother but they were both in America for the event. Since Thursday was a holiday here in Germany, hubby took Friday off as well to make it a nice 4 day weekend.

We left on Thursday morning and arrived at the grandparents’ place in Deggendorf at about 3:30 in the afternoon. Since it was hubbers birthday, some friends of ours decided to pay him a surprise visit and it was all I could do to keep it secret for more than a month. Hubbers was pretty shocked when they showed up and after hanging out a bit with the family, we all went to dinner at a fantastic place in Bodenmais near the Czech border. We sat outside in the beer garden and Ayla was able to sit at the table and be out of the way of everyone. She never whined or anything and accepted her fate to sit quietly by the table and be bored very well for a 4 month old puppy. She got a bit nippy at the end but since it was after 11 pm when we left, it’s understandable. It was way past her bedtime and that certainly a very exciting time for her, meeting new people, discovering a new place and having to sit still for hours.

Friday was hubber’s father’s birthday so his sister and mother came over for a BBQ. Ayla got plenty more spoiling and treats from them. We had also gone to the pet store ourselves and bought her some new goodies since our food supplies at home were running low and she was all out of honey baked pig’s ears…mmmmh, tasty. 😉 Again, she managed to surprise us and behaved perfectly…is it the excitement of new people or just being away from home in general? Who knows, but at least if everyone else thinks she’s perfect it helps us to continue believing she is not so far off from being a nice calm puppy all the time. A not so perfect moment occurred when she went on a walk with hubbers before everyone arrived.

Apparently Ayla made a great discovery in the fields which was in the form of very stinky manure. Being a dog, she had to roll in it and even ate a bit which must be delicious. Unfortunately for her, she smelled so bad afterwards that we decided a bath was in her very near future. But since the BBQ ran pretty late, she lucked into a delay and didn’t have to suffer through it until Saturday morning. This time we bathed her in the bath tub instead of a stall shower and it seemed to work well for us. She still tried to escape a few times but thankfully with two people, you can usually keep her pretty much on the ground. She took the whole ordeal much better this time around so I guess we have to keep giving them a try until she finds them a bit more comfortable if not pleasurable…and hopefully we can manage to get her nails clipped soon too.

All in all it was a successful weekend with Ayla. She had a few accidents inside but since it was a completely new environment and she ended up having to use some new and different signals to let us know she wanted to go out, we were still pleased with the results. She slept almost the whole 3 hour drive home without a sound. Thankfully we drove the BMW which has air conditioning or we might have all wanted to pass out.

Now it’s back to life as usual. Hopefully some of Ayla’s good behavior this weekend is a result of her maturity and not just the novelty factor of being out somewhere…I guess we’ll soon find out.