Today was a very exciting day for us. We had to do some grocery shopping and wanted to buy the material for the new patio today so we decided the easiest way to accomplish the task was to take Ayla along with us and one person would stay in the car with her while the other went into the store. Of course one of us could have stayed home while the other did the shopping but we figured that getting Ayla more accustomed to riding in the Defender is still important and it wouldn’t have been as much fun. Besides the hubby wasn’t crazy about the idea of grocery shopping by himself anyway.

Unfortunately the weather has been kinda iffy today and isn’t supposed to be that great the next couple of days and it’s only about 50 degrees so building the new patio wouldn’t necessarily have been that fun. So once the shopping trip was underway we decided to nix that part of the shopping trip. Instead we started at Fresnapf which is basically the German equivalent of PetsMart. I bought some more kitty treats and cat food…and of course a couple new toys for Ayla (a boomerang made of tennis ball material, a rope chew toy and a squishy beer bottle which she already seems to like). Ayla got to meet another puppy in the parking lot and was a perfect little angel. The hubby got to brag that she has slept through the night every night but the first one and how smart she is.

When I finished up at the grocery store, Ayla was passed out in the back. Guess the car ride and meeting a new puppy were too much excitement for her. But on our way back home, she let us know she needed to make a pit stop and we had a short little test walk on the leash. She’s doing really well with it today after not being so crazy about it a few days ago – amazing how far she can come in such a short time…although it could all be gone again tomorrow. lol

When we made it back home finally, our neighbors were outside with their Border Collie Fly. She is a very sweet and smart dog so we were hoping that Ayla could be exposed to some positive “role models.” The neighbors just love Ayla and think she is adorable. The twelve year old son has brought treats over for her and extra toys which Fly had extras of. The two dogs were hitting it off so we decided to take a more extended, real first walk with Ayla through the fields behind our house. She was so good during the walk. She hardly ever pulled against the leash and only needed to take a few quick breaks in the grass. Fly was teaching her to eat the cattle grass growing everywhere and letting her maternal instincts take over in general.

So far we’ve had a really good day and hardly any accidents at all. She’s already growing up so quickly it’s amazing. We weighed her last night and she’s up to 19 pounds…means she put on about 2-3 pounds since we got her last week. Anyway she’s passed out now so we’ll see how the evening progresses.