We FINALLY gave our new puppy girl a name -- G.G. or Gigi. That can stand for any number of things! . . . Good Girl, Guard Girl, Giant Girl, Gorgeous Girl, Genial Girl -- or on certain days, Grubby Girl, Grungy Girl, Grotesque Girl . . . well, you understand, I'm sure!!
When I asked Mark about naming her Gigi he liked it a lot, and he immediately thought of Maurice Chevalier's song "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" from the Gigi movie:
Thank heaven for little girls,
For little girls get bigger every day!
Thank heaven for little girls --
They grow up in the most delightful way!
Those little eyes, so helpless and appealing,
One day will flash and send you crashing thru the ceiling.
Thank heaven for little girls,
Thank heaven for them all,
No matter where, no matter who,
Without them, what would little boys do?
He even sang it for me! Gotta love it!
As for Gigi, she's made quite a lot of progress in just the few days she's been here with us. At bed time the first night when she got closed into a crate she screamed and barked and got absolutely crazy. She peed and pooped and carried on continually for ages! She'd get exhausted and get quiet for a little while then there she'd go AGAIN! Whew! One horrible night! The next night I ended up sleeping out on the sofa with her. As long as she can put her head up against you she's perfectly happy and willing to lay down and sleep, so we both managed to sleep out there all night! But I knew that that couldn't go on for long. So now we feed her lots of food and get her to drink a bunch of water, then we go outside and she can race around the yard until she's really tired! Then we come back inside and she chases after a rolling toy until she's REALLY exhausted, then she goes into her (now clean) crate where she lays down and goes to sleep for the whole night and that way we can all go to sleep!! Whew! WAAAAY better!
Having her outside has been interesting too. The first day when Duke saw her he came running up to the fence and she ran straight over to him -- I found it odd that she wasn't afraid of him. She never barked at him or anything like the other dogs do. When she got up to the fence, Duke stuck his nose against the fence down at ground level, and she stuck her nose through and licked his face! Ever since then he has absolutely loved her! But when Arthur walked up to join them, Duke ran him off. And every time Arthur tries to check Gigi out through the fence, Duke gets between Arthur and the fence where she is, and if Arthur keeps trying to get up to her, Duke runs him away. He even kicked at him once to get rid of him -- something Duke almost never does! He used to behave pretty much like that with Lizzie, too, but he's even more protective of Gigi! Amazing! They should be quite an interesting pair when she grows up!
I had planned to get her started in a puppy training class since she already had an 8-in-1 shot back on 1/28. But when we went over to our vet on Monday, she told us not to take her to any public session until she's 14 weeks old -- another month or so! At that point she will have had 3 shots, though, so she certainly should be safer. So we're waiting until after Monday, March 24 to begin puppy class.
My main concern now, though, is how I'm going to deal with her once Mark goes back offshore next week! I guess I'll probably be using up a fair amount of PTO -- I'll probably just come in to work at 7 or so and go home at around 1 PM. That way she will only have to be closed inside her crate for 6 or 7 hours at a time. I was originally told that her age in months plus one is how long she could wait to go out -- in her case, currently only 3 hours -- but when she goes to sleep at night she stays asleep for 6 or 7 hours so I guess that's not accurate for her. I will leave her a dog litter box in her crate, but she hasn't ever used that yet.
Well - I guess we'll see how things go and make changes as needed, huh? Whatever it takes.
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