I'm not going to lie. I love wiener dogs. A while ago I found a Dachshund breeder in TN that seemed to have a pretty good selection (Busy B Doxies), and every month or two I would check their website just to see what they had. Mark had said a few times that he thought wire-haired dachshunds were neat because they were really scruffy and looked like little old men, but after a while he got pretty tired of me constantly pointing out puppies. I backed off and shelved the idea, though a few weeks ago when I went to their website, they had one lone female wire-haired puppy left. They had reduced her price since she was getting a little older and still hadn't sold, so I showed Mark and wondered aloud why nobody wanted her when she was so cute, then I promptly forgot about it because I didn't seriously expect to get a puppy. I don't know if it was the sleep deprivation or what, but he came up to me a few days later and said, "...what if...we got a puppy?".
I made him sleep on it to make sure he was serious, so the next day I called the breeder and we set everything up. At the time the weather looked good, so I tentatively planned to fly to TN to pick her up the next week. Of course, that didn't happen. I almost immediately got sick, the weather crapped out, and the next thing I knew I was taking several days off from work and facing a LOT of driving. Oh well.
In the end, I worked an eve shift, then a day shift, then tossed all my stuff in the car and drove 3+ hours to Christiansburg, VA. I got there just as the weather got nasty (blowing snow and 10 degrees kind of nasty), and shortly after getting to the hotel, I found out that I had to drive even further than I expected the next morning. Yay! I was still feeling fairly sick, so I spent the evening eating cereal in the hotel room and watching the Weather Channel by myself. What an exciting Valentine's Day (haha!). I slept pretty bad (maybe 4.5 hours?), hit the road at 6am (it was a balmy 2 degrees and windy), and got to our meeting point in TN a little before 9:30am. Luckily, the breeder made better time than she expected, so she was there early, too.
I made him sleep on it to make sure he was serious, so the next day I called the breeder and we set everything up. At the time the weather looked good, so I tentatively planned to fly to TN to pick her up the next week. Of course, that didn't happen. I almost immediately got sick, the weather crapped out, and the next thing I knew I was taking several days off from work and facing a LOT of driving. Oh well.
In the end, I worked an eve shift, then a day shift, then tossed all my stuff in the car and drove 3+ hours to Christiansburg, VA. I got there just as the weather got nasty (blowing snow and 10 degrees kind of nasty), and shortly after getting to the hotel, I found out that I had to drive even further than I expected the next morning. Yay! I was still feeling fairly sick, so I spent the evening eating cereal in the hotel room and watching the Weather Channel by myself. What an exciting Valentine's Day (haha!). I slept pretty bad (maybe 4.5 hours?), hit the road at 6am (it was a balmy 2 degrees and windy), and got to our meeting point in TN a little before 9:30am. Luckily, the breeder made better time than she expected, so she was there early, too.
Hello, Wembley! :)
About fifteen minutes after meeting up with the breeder it was just me and Wembley. I made her as comfy as I could in the carrier and hit the road again. We made one stop just north of Blacksburg, where she wanted nothing to do with being outside or getting back in her carrier, and drove the rest of the way back nonstop. I got back home a little after 4pm (and after nearly 10 hours of driving), and apparently just after Mark's dad had pulled in the driveway and started unloading his truck. Bacon and Giz were already going nuts, and once they realized I was back too AND had a tiny dog with me, it got a bit crazy and Wembley's first few minutes inside were a little, um, soggy. (Basically she let loose on my lap. Yay.) Things eventually calmed down and we let the dogs start to get to know each other.
Giz was slightly obsessed with her at first. Bacon was a bit suspicious.
She's so tiny! Her parents weigh in at 8 and 9 pounds, so she's probably going to stay pretty small.
It didn't take long for her to fit in and sleep with Bacon and Giz on the big bed in the kitchen. :)
She (so far) doesn't bark when Bacon and Giz bark at things in the front yard. They were both going nuts when I took this, and Wembley just sat there and didn't know what to do.
Wiener buddies! You can already see some of the scruff on her face. Wembley is so tiny that she makes Bacon look like a giant.
We have a gate across the kitchen door to keep Wembley in the kitchen. She's so small that she can slip between some of the bars, so we put cardboard over those spots. I didn't think anything of leaving her in the kitchen while I did something upstairs last week, and I didn't hear any barking or loud noises, so I figured they must have all been behaving.
Apparently they were all being quiet because Wembley chewed the cardboard enough to slip through the gate, and had made it up the little steps and onto the couch to be with the Big Doggies. I sent Mark this picture and told him we should rename her Houdini.
Bacon likes to sit on the top of the couch, so of course Wembley wanted to do it, too. It's pretty funny to watch her pick things up from Bacon and Giz. Bacon is pretty good about playing nicely with her.
So far she's doing pretty well with housetraining and basic things like 'sit' and 'stay', and she already knows how to use the little steps we have to get onto and off of the couch without jumping. We need to work on leash training her; she tries to eat the leash and her harness. Aside from that, she's fairly good about just chewing on her toys and only occasionally tries to eat our kitchen chairs. She's super sweet and likes to say hello by climbing into my lap, and so far she only barks when she's playing. She also really likes to eat snow clumps that fall off our shoes, so she's in luck...we're supposed to get more snow tomorrow. At any rate, I think we really lucked out - she's a great dog, and I'm looking forward to many good years with her! :)
About fifteen minutes after meeting up with the breeder it was just me and Wembley. I made her as comfy as I could in the carrier and hit the road again. We made one stop just north of Blacksburg, where she wanted nothing to do with being outside or getting back in her carrier, and drove the rest of the way back nonstop. I got back home a little after 4pm (and after nearly 10 hours of driving), and apparently just after Mark's dad had pulled in the driveway and started unloading his truck. Bacon and Giz were already going nuts, and once they realized I was back too AND had a tiny dog with me, it got a bit crazy and Wembley's first few minutes inside were a little, um, soggy. (Basically she let loose on my lap. Yay.) Things eventually calmed down and we let the dogs start to get to know each other.
We have a gate across the kitchen door to keep Wembley in the kitchen. She's so small that she can slip between some of the bars, so we put cardboard over those spots. I didn't think anything of leaving her in the kitchen while I did something upstairs last week, and I didn't hear any barking or loud noises, so I figured they must have all been behaving.
So far she's doing pretty well with housetraining and basic things like 'sit' and 'stay', and she already knows how to use the little steps we have to get onto and off of the couch without jumping. We need to work on leash training her; she tries to eat the leash and her harness. Aside from that, she's fairly good about just chewing on her toys and only occasionally tries to eat our kitchen chairs. She's super sweet and likes to say hello by climbing into my lap, and so far she only barks when she's playing. She also really likes to eat snow clumps that fall off our shoes, so she's in luck...we're supposed to get more snow tomorrow. At any rate, I think we really lucked out - she's a great dog, and I'm looking forward to many good years with her! :)
she's precious! congratulations on the new addition!
ReplyDeleteThank you!! We really lucked out...she's such a fun little dog!! :)
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