We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and that there were some very happy puppy faces in everyone’s homes. Ayla got a new cheetah stuffie that she seemed thrilled with and happily pranced around the house with for a few hours. She did chew a tiny hole in him and he was filthy in the end, but she was adorable with him so it was all worth it.

She got a few more small gifts too, and of course a very nice fresh bone which she quickly devoured. We also bought her a remote controlled car in hopes of starting to train her to avoid certain distractions and to listen to us when we call for her. We picked out a very robust car that can also drive in water, figuring that if she happens to drool all over it, we don’t have to worry about it short circuiting. Our training worked fairly well but Ayla eventually got so excited about it all that she was hard to control. And then the battery on the car died so we had to carry it back home. You’d think that if you spend 80 euros on a car and charge the battery for over a day, it would hold up a bit longer – but apparently shopping at the low end of the range doesn’t buy much anymore in RC cars.

We’ve also been working on a panic command so Ayla knows we need her to return to us immediately – “abort, abort, abort!” It works really well so far although she tends to respond better when Stefan says it. I guess we just need to work on it a bit more.