Our Christmas Eve

Today is our Christmas Eve....here at home.  Santa is coming tonight and we are doing our family Christmas tomorrow morning.  John mentioned exchanging ONE present tonight and the kids are all excited about that.  (Although I don't know if they will still have the excitement once they see what I'm letting them open....more of a "needed" gift rather than a fun one.)

I'm all done wrapping presents....Santa needs to catch up though, I hear.  My fingers are sore right now though from all the tape tearing so I think I'm going to lay down and read whilst eating a snickers.

I have to go register Hans for his next puppy class today too.  The instructor said if I did it before Christmas, she'd knock $20 off the class price.  This one will be with a different pet store.  The trainer is pretty crass and rough, but I kind of like that when it comes to the dogs.  No nonsense training, I guess.  We go to her free puppy play time twice a week to meet other large breed puppies.  Every time we go to the pet store we get the same "Oh my, he's going to be a BIG dog!"  I don't think their definition and my definition of "big" are the same.  I mean, we didn't want a 10 pound dog.  We were shooting for 40-60 pounds and if he ends up being close to 70, that's ok.  To most people, I guess that's a BIG dog...especially around the metro.  But to me, it's what we were going for. 

I just weighed Hans, and he's weighing in at 29 pounds.  He turned 14 weeks on Wednesday.  There's an old wives tale that you can double the weight at 14 weeks and that's what they will be at a year.  (I had heard 16 weeks too....)  So spose that means like 58-65?  Assuming he might gain another 5 pounds in the next 2 weeks.....

We got a call from the crass trainer on Tuesday night asking if Hans could come in to play with a 4 month old Chesapeake Bay Retriever who was having trouble socializing.  Katie and I took Hans in and the trainer worked with both of them for almost an hour.  Boy, this other puppy had some issues.  Seemed he's only played with their much older dog, and obviously puppies play a LOT different.  He was very aggressive toward Hans, which freaked  the other owner out.  It didn't freak me out at all - it was actually really interesting and good for Hans to find out that other dogs have limits.  You can't just play, play, play as hard as you want to.  Sometimes it's good for him to be told by another dog - cut it out!

Anyway - she'd grab Hans by the collar saying she didn't want her dog to hurt him.  I told her not to worry about it - I trusted the trainer and she would take the steps to make sure both dogs were safe.  She kept calling her dog a "brat" and a "bad dog".  Finally, the trainer had to send her out of the training area to just walk to store because her tension was freaking the dog out.  It was interesting because after she was about 20 feet away - he was a different dog.  Still timid, but actually ran around and played a bit.  We always knew when she was close because the dog would go back to his old habits.  I guess it's very similar to moms and kids.....