Friday Reflections // Snowy's First Few Days at Home

 

It's the return of Friday Reflections! And, of course, the only thing on my mind this week is Miss Snowy and her first few days at home with us! We've been doing so much bonding, training, and figuring out being pup parents this week and boy is it A LOT! It's so, so, SO good and we are so thrilled that Snowy is a part of our lives, but getting Snowy acclimated to us, her new home, and the neighborhood is a full time job. Our top priority right now is properly caring for her especially in these crucial first few days, and I'm happy to report that she is doing GREAT!

Snowy and I sat outside in the front yard for a solid 30 minutes on her second day home just to take in the sites and sounds of the neighborhood!

Snowy is pretty timid by nature, which isn't surprising as she is a rescue and we're unsure about her history before she was rescued. She gets pretty nervous on walks, especially around other people and ESPECIALLY around other dogs. I'm sure the fact that she is unfamiliar with her surroundings makes everything so much scarier. She's gaining more confidence each day and with each walk and I'm sure with time and gradual exposure to different areas of the neighborhood that she'll lose her fear. 

Showing Snowy her kennel!

In addition to getting her acclimated, we've been working on training Snowy in a lot of different ways. We've gotten "sit" and "paw" down pat, and we're working on perfecting "down", "come", "stay", and even "roll over"! We're also planning to crate train her, which I've worked on a bit today. We've been keeping her kennel door open and keeping her toys in there so she can go in and out and learn that that is her "room"! We won't really need to use it too often as of right now since we're home most of the time, but we want her to get used to being in her kennel whenever she might be home alone.

Our first two runs together! After a 1 miler on the left, and after two miles on the right!

Of course I'm hoping Snowy can be my running buddy as I train for my races. I'm slowly introducing her to running with really short distances that are really close by to our home. Like I said above, she's really nervous about her surroundings so that's still definitely present on our runs. There's some moments where she has to stop and get cuddles from me before she'll continue on which is definitely adorable, but I hope that she will get more comfortable with it with time. I think I'm going to keep the runs on the shorter side until she's more comfortable, but I'm sure we'll get there!

The thing that we're happiest about is how quickly she's become comfortable with us. From the very first day she has been very cuddly and she sleeps in bed with us every night. While we're still nurturing our bond with her, we are over the moon with how quickly she has grown to trust us. We'll continue working to maintain that trust over time, but she has fit so seamlessly into our little family and the three of us are all so, so happy!

Snowy had her first puppuccino!

This weekend Brett is away camping with his family. We had talked about maybe bringing her on the trip so the three of us could enjoy a summer get away, but ultimately we decided that that might not be the smartest decision and that I should stay home with her. She's been through a lot in these last few weeks and we thought that bringing her to yet another strange place with more strange people would just cause her more unnecessary stress. So we're having a bit of a relaxed girl's weekend at home instead so we can continue to work on getting her acclimated!

Of course we had to try the Disney eye filter on her!

While I'm at home with Snowy, I'm planning to get a lot of reading done. I mainly want to catch up on the reading that I didn't get to last weekend, and try to fit in a couple more NEWTs TBR picks as well. We're two weeks into August and before we know it the month will be over, so while I have this time to myself I may as well get some serious reading done! Fingers crossed that I don't get too distracted 😂