James & Carolanne

Well, I have been meaning to post something on here about our new puppy we got in April of this year. She's around 4 months old now and her name is Cookie. She is a cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a King Charles Cavalier. She will be a medium size dog when full grown. She kind of looks like a mini Rusty. (That was our Golden Retriever dog we used to have that we had to get rid of when I was pregnant with Julia, but he went to a really nice couple that love him dearly)

The kids love her although to begin with she knocked Julia over quite a bit which Julia was not pleased with.  Cookie also really liked Julia's ears...yum ear wax. Cookie would much prefer to run after the kids and pick up any food that they drop instead of eating her own food and she is always trying to get behind Julia's high chair and find something tasty. If all that fails she goes and eats her own food. The joys of owning a puppy and having small children all at the same time. For the most part they all get along great. We hesitate to say she is completely house broken, because just as we say it she tends to have an accident. She is doing really well though and for the most part is house broken.

It seems like our kids and our puppy all really like the outdoors and will try to get out whenever they can. I have taken Cookie with us when we have went on a walk and when she gets tired she paws at the back of the stroller and hops a ride. This only works in the double stroller, because the back basket we can pop down for her to jump in. Although she has no problems with jumping.  The other day she jumped up into the back of our truck all on her own and today James caught her jumping onto the kitchen chair...she can climb on there before Julia. We are working on the not jumping on people and only petting her when she is not jumping up. This is not the easiest to teach a puppy when Ben does not mind at all if Cookie jumps up on him and sometimes is trying to get her to jump up.

I would have to say it is definitely easier to train a puppy without kids. Really hard to all be consistent. She is slowly learning though and some days are so much easier then others. There are days that James and I have thought "Why did we get a puppy?", but for the most part we like her and think she is really smart and we also think she is really cute. We also know she will grow up and the bond that Ben and Julia are developing with her is so cute to watch. Ben tries to teach her to do things like "sit" and Julia tries to copy to and tell Cookie to sit...although Cookie listens more to Ben then Julia. It is really cute to watch though. When we are at my parents house she will take the plastic dog they have and you can hear her telling it to sit.