So….we got another dog.
It’s a long story, but she needed a forever home. And she now has one with us. It all happened very fast. We found out about her Sunday night and on Monday night my husband picked her up. !!!! Not much time to prepare, although we really didn’t have to do much. Her previous owner sent along all of her things…her bed, blanket, food, etc.
She’s a 6 month old teacup Chihuahua. And actually, ‘teacup’ Chihuahua is not even a real breed so I shouldn’t even use that term. A Chihuahua is a Chihuahua….she’s just tiny and had tiny parents. As my sister-in-law put it “she’s all legs and ears!”. She weighs 4 pounds. All of the pictures actually make her look much larger than she is. In fact, she wears a bell on her collar so we can hear her at all times. Which helps when we’re trying not to step on her!
She is a sweetheart. She loves being held and loves to cuddle. She is super playful too. I got her some catnip-free cat toys to play with (regular dog toys are just too big for her). She loves to play.
So far, it’s going pretty good with the other animals. When we are home, we let the dogs free within the house, we just keep an eye on them. Watson always wants to play with her and she actually plays back, which is adorable and funny. We definitely have to supervise though because he’s so much larger than she is. He would never hurt her intentionally, but he’s a 60 pound dog as opposed to her whole 4 pounds.
Hannah growls at her if she gets to close, but she hasn’t bitten her or anything. We’ve been giving Hannah a lot of extra attention. It will take some time for them to become buddies, but it’s only been a few days. So we’re being patient. And, Hannah still growls at Watson all the time and they are buddies even! Ah, life with Chihuahua’s.
The cats just ignore her completely (which is just fine). Although she thinks it’s fun to chase them. Which is really funny, especially when she chases Howie (the bully of the house). Macy has batted her on the head a few times when she got too playful. It’s quite amusing to watch!
We are seeing a little more of her personality come out. She can be fierce when she wants to be, which is good. She’s so small that I think she tries to make up for it sometimes. Last night when I was feeding everyone dinner, Watson and Hannah had both finished and the new puppy was still eating. So Watson and Hannah sat down and watched her and Hannah took a couple steps towards her and the puppy just CHARGED at Hannah as a warning to stay away from her food. It worked. Hannah backed off. Which, honestly, serves Hannah right because Hannah does the same thing to Watson and the cats if they get within 6 feet of her while she’s eating. So the new puppy is small but mighty. She has to be!
She sleeps completely through the night in her little bed on the floor. We set up a little ‘cove’ for her in our bedroom. So she has her bed, her blankets, her bear, her water, a pee pad (just in case), and a space heater. She burrows in her bed under her blanket and sleeps all night. It’s wonderful! When we’re gone during the day she has free reign of our whole bedroom.
She went to the vet this week. She got vaccinated, microchipped, etc. She’s healthy! She will get spayed next week. We have never had a dog this tiny before. Because of their size, they tend to have health problems and unfortunately their life expectancy is not as long as ‘regular’ sized dogs. So we just want to ensure that we’re doing everything right to care for her properly. So far, so good.
Oh and we named her Abby. Abby London Skye to be exact. London was her name given by her first owners, and Sky was the name suggested by my niece. So we kept them all, plus the one we picked: Abby. Does anyone watch NCIS? We do, especially lately (we’ve been watching the older ones). It’s a great show! And we are big fans of Abby, the forensic genius, AND we were watching the show when we were discussing names for the new puppy. So it just seemed to fit.
A little side note: when I was picking Abby up from the vet yesterday, I ran into the lady that works with the rescue organization where we adopted Watson! I told her how well he was doing and how much we loved him. She got tears in her eyes. She was so happy to hear that he was doing well. The organization we went through works very closely with our vets office….our vet office provides free vaccinations and heartworm prevention meds to all of the labs. It’s amazing really. Oh if I had unlimited funds and time and space, I would love to just adopt them all!
But three dogs is enough for now ha ha.
