I’m a big girl now! Growing like a weed! Every day someone says “She’s doubled in size”! Every morning Daddy greets me with “You’ve grown again!” Mummy now needs both hands to carry me up and down the stairs that I am not allowed to do until my joints and bones are older and firmer. Don’t tell anybody that twice when they didn’t shut the lower gate, I scooted up the stairs and once I made it over the board at the top, though no one can figure out how. It remains my secret ;-).

Mummy is training me to be brushed on the grooming table and have the hair under my feet trimmed. I have to keep struggling now and then so that they put off my first haircut as long as possible.

I sleep cooperatively in my crate at night and wake Mummy at 7:30 to go out. If she thinks she needs to sleep a bit more, she takes me - meanwhile empty - into the bedroom and I snooze next to her bed until she wants to get up. Then I get breakfast; I’m a good eater and enjoy my 3 meals a day.

It’s a different story if they put me in the crate during the day because they have to go somewhere and I can’t go along, like church. I do have to whine in the crate then for a while, but the neighbors say they never hear me and when Mummy and Daddy come home, I’m a good quiet girl. Because I’m silent in the car crate, I get to go along anywhere where I don’t have to be left for more than ½ hour. It’s winter. So when we went to the Christmas Market in Bremen, Mummy brought me after church and carried me all over the market to help me to get used to noise and crowds. My weight then was already on the border line for her to carry that long.

I accompany Mummy to her English lessons at the kennel so that I get to know Auntie Conny. I will be staying for 2 weeks in March for the first time. The whole family there thinks I’m the cat’s pyjamas.

Pastor and his wife brought their puppy, a month older than I, for a walk and play session. Emmie is so cool that we played constantly in the fields, in the yard and in the living-room. I was asleep on the kitchen floor before they got their car doors closed.

One evening Roxy came to play with me; her sister Daisy preferred to be the audience.

The banks on the side of one of our walking paths are a good place to practice climbing and the woods provide great sticks to carry around and whomp people with. I’m allowed off leash in the fields because I don’t go too far from Mummy and I come back when called. Especially if she shakes the treat bag. I beg for treats from Auntie Uschi. I’m trying to learn to leave my elderly doggie friend Sammy in peace as we walk but it’s soooooooo tempting to bounce at her.

Once I really lost my cool, though. Dec. 29^th I was out in my beloved backyard and it was just getting dark. Suddenly there was a bang and bright lights in the empty lot next door. I screeched and fled into the bushes. The neighbor kids were trying out their fireworks for New Year’s Eve. Mummy and Daddy brought me in and talked to me about it. At midnight on the 31^st Mummy stayed inside with me and fed me treats to convince me that fireworks are a good thing.  I took them to show her that I wasn’t too upset.

Treats are also earned for doing my homework: target practice (I have to put my front paws on a little square rug and stay there until released) and have to go left and right around Daddy’s wastepaper basket. These will be useful in agility later. At my second lesson I ran through the long tunnel to get to Mummy. They will be putting up my tunnel in the backyard and laying the board from the teeter totter on the patio for me to learn to walk the line.  Big girl stuff for a 3-month-old.

Tomorrow marks the end of my first month in this house and the end of my babyhood (Then I have to learn useful things like "sit" and "lie" and "stay". My breeders and a bunch of neighbors are coming to toast me and my new life. I wonder what ex-Mummy and ex-Daddy will think of me now.