Whew! What an evening!

Yesterday was horrendous for ALL of us! . . . especially poor Gigi!  I came home from work and we loaded her up in Mark's Expedition and headed over to the vet.  I THOUGHT she would just be getting a third vaccination. Ha!  The poor baby got all KINDS of things --

 

Bordetella-Parainfluenza vaccine,

 

rabies vaccination,

 

vaccines for DHPP (distemper, hepatitis, leptospirosis, parainfluenza and parvovirus),

L4 (4 stains of leptospiral bacterin

(Leptospira Canicola-Grippotyphosa-Icterohaemorrhagiae-Pomona Bacterin)

 

Trifexis,

 

Metronidazole flagyl,

 

and even eye ointment to be put into her right eye every day for a while - she has a minor entropion of her right lower eyelid at the moment.  She may or may not grow out of that.  If not, she'll need to have it surgically repaired once she's grown up, but that ointment will prevent injury to the eye itself in the meantime.  But what a pain it is to put that stuff in there!

 

And while they were dealing with her, they kept giving her treats.  Anyway, once she got done there, we headed back home for all of an entire half hour so we could ALL "go out" and then we got back in the Expo to drive up to the puppy training place.  Well, because the interstate was a mess, the traffic on Bluebonnet was just AWFUL and it took us a good 45 minutes (instead of 15!), and by the time we got there poor Gigi had thrown up big time.  Poor baby! 

 

But once she got out and met ALL those other dogs while we all signed up, she seemed to feel better - or at least forgot about how bad she felt for a while there. 

 

And they did a lot of interesting things once we got started.  For starters, they had us get in a circle and then hand off our dogs to the person on our right so we all got to meet everyone else's dog -- and the dogs got to visit with about a dozen other folks. 

The teacher is cleaning up a mess here that another dog threw up.
And I'm dealing with someone's dog who has just had her ears cropped.
(Gigi is back there on the left with that guy who's down on his knee dealing with her.)
A little earlier we were supposed to walk our own dogs around  in the circle,
and have them walk across those colored mats.
I have no idea why they wanted us to do that.  They're dogs, NOT horses! 
I didn't notice anyone who didn't want to walk on those things.

 

Then we began teaching them to "sit" (see below).

 

Gigi is obviously getting bigger. 
She was just under 20 lbs when we got her and now (after just one month) she's 33.5 lbs.

 

 

Then near the end they had all the puppies get together with the other ones - one at a time.  Now THAT was a good thing since she doesn't get to deal with the other dogs at home just yet.  And she was perfectly fine about it, too - even that tiny Chihuahua who barked and snapped at all the other dogs!  Excellent!

 

They said we need to go on with the teaching several times a day for just a few minutes at a time so that by next week she will know how to come when called, sit, and lay down.  I'll give it my best shot and we'll see . . .

 

Oh - and there was one other Cane Corso there, too, that we met while signing up.  She was 9 months old and they had completed the puppy training class already and were signing up for the next class up.  She was so gorgeous!  She was a solid black with her ears cropped so she looks very much like all the photos you see of Cane Corsos.  And she was a real sweetheart, too.  Very nice to have experienced that after having met Jackie!  Maybe I DON'T have to worry about getting Gigi trained well after all. 

 

Anyway, yesterday was quite a hassle - I got up at 5:15, got to work at 6:45 and didn't actually get to kick back and relax until 9 last night.  And I had to get to bed right after that since I had to get to work early again today.  I am SURE looking forward to this weekend!  Whew!