Well, Sam-Dog (he now has two names like the rest of our herd) has been having a quite a summer. His first trip to the lake in early June was when he realized he didn’t know how to swim. Well, we remedied that so I thought you’d like some pictures of his vacation at the lake:

BEFORE:

Now, MEET AQUA DOG !!!!!!! THE NEW WATER MENACE!!!

As usual, he’s been wonderful. It only took him about an hour or so of watching the others before he finally got up the courage to try - then it was all over!!! We couldn’t keep him out of the water!! I will say that at the end of the day, he was “dog tired”. He basically slept for a solid day and was ready to go back at it as soon as we let him near the water.

He’s thoroughly enjoyed his vacation and we thoroughly enjoyed watching him learn to swim. It was like watching your child take their first steps – great!!

He’s been a great addition to our family. His personality is really coming out now and he “talks” to us to make sure he has our attention! He and Scoobee Dew have become good friends and they pal around all over the place. Thanks NEARR!

Cooper is so much fun to have around. He brings a smile to everyone’s face. He’s starting to walk more and more and we had a great surprise when we went back to the vet to get microchipped – he lost a few pounds! He’s now 104.6 lbs. (down from 106.7 lbs.).

He gets a bit anxious with thunderstorms and fireworks, but we’ve found that as long as the TV is up loud enough, he doesn’t notice the other sounds.

He’s quite a vocal fellow when he sees other dogs he wants to meet and can get a bit overexcited to meet new people and dogs. He also gets overly anxious and excited when going to new places.

We’re looking forward to starting obedience training in a few weeks.

Well, we’ve now had Ruby for a week and she feels like she is one of the family.

She and Bumper do okay. They don’t really interact much yet…Bumper is still a bit protective of his space and Ruby has learned to stay away. Having said that, when he isn’t in his spots, she is very comfortable in his bed, on the window seat, on the couch, etc. (Bumper also was very quick to sleep in her bed the second night when she went to his!)

We are getting into a routine. Yesterday she finally did her business on a leash, although she still hasn’t peed on leash. She has a spot on the side of our house or in a neighbor’s fenced in yard. We are trying to avoid the latter as we want her to learn to pee on the leash or at that spot. I’m a little concerned that she isn’t doing either enough, but I assume that will come as she gets comfortable. It took her awhile to eat as well. Today is the first day that she actually ate twice and a full days portion.

Last night we experienced our first thunder storm with her. At about 4:30 am she jumped onto our bed and couldn’t calm down. It took us a minute to realize it was a storm. She was so stressed. We gave her a sedative and she eventually fell asleep. We are expecting storms over the next 24 hours and hope that we can figure out the best way to manage.

The kids love her and she is great with them. I can’t believe there was even a question about that but I know that it was just an unknown.

Cooper is a sweet and wonderful dog. We feel so fortunate to have him as part of our family. He’s adjusting nicely to his new home and already recognizes it when we come back from walks. He’s already made a few friends on our daily walks and hopes to have more time to play with them soon.

His favorite spots in the house are the couch, the loveseat, the foyer and the kitchen floor. All spots give great vantage points to all the activity and he switches between them depending on what’s going on. He’s still working on gaining confidence with stairs, but he’s getting better every day. He loves his belly rubs and his daily massages with the Kong brush.

Everyone that meets him tells us how lucky we are and what a friendly, handsome boy he is. He just had his first visit to the vet this morning and he did really well. We made quite a grand entrance by charging in enthusiastically to greet everyone there.

We’d like to thank everyone at NEARR who helped make this adoption possible as well as his foster mom who’s helped make the transition an easy process.