Update

Emmy making herself comfortable in our laundry

Training with Bill

Play time!

Emmy's new cape!

We realized the other day that it is the beginning of March and we haven't given everyone an update on Emmy recently! Emmy is doing great! All three of us have really slipped into a good rhythm together as a family and bringing Emmy to the various places we go is becoming more of second nature (and less of a fiasco!). Emmy is getting pretty big too! We're estimating that she's close to 40 lbs now...hardly the 12 lb puppy that came home in November. She's very active and is getting her commands down pretty well now. Because of the cold weather, Emmy has been playing more in the building than outside (plus we don't have a fenced in yard, so that makes outside play hard). Luckily our building has a LONG main hallway right outside our door, so Emmy loves to run up and down it playing fetch. We caught some videos tonight of her playing. I thought you'd all like to see what she can do...so there are a couple clips of that too (she got distracted in the first one when some people came out of an apartment...we had to "cut" filming and regroup).

This weekend, Hope College held their annual Dance Marathon. We went Friday night to check it out, and of course brought Miss Emmy. She was a hit from the moment she walked in the door. Within five minutes of being there we ran into one of the "Miracle Children" (Dance Marathon raises money for the Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids and different Hope organizations dance/raise money for specific children who are patients at the hospital) who just got a PAWS dog, Buttons. Buttons is 5 1/2 years old and has been moved to this little girl after her first client passed away. They just received Buttons close to Valentine's Day and are now working to get certified with her. It was such an amazing time for us to meet a family first hand who has been touched by one of these dogs. We definitely are thankful for that reminder as we continue to get close to Emmy and love her with all of hearts- that we will one day be sad when she leaves us to go on for training and work...but she is going to help someone like that...and that is an amazing gift we can give!

Training for us is at a stand still as we are in a two week break between puppy class sessions. We've been making sure to spend a lot of time on training at home and using the extra free time to get more social outings in - including Best Buy, more Meijer runs, downtown Holland, Dance Marathon, a spaghetti supper fundraiser, and even some church events. At our last puppy class Emmy did get a new cape as her original one that she came home with was getting pretty snug. Now we have a nice new one that is quite roomy! Yay!

Another piece of big news on the Emmy front is that she is losing teeth...LIKE CRAZY! You all saw the posts when she started losing her front teeth, which have all fallen out and her adult teeth are in. But now she's losing everything from her canines back- on top and bottom. In the course of one week she's lost about 6 or 7 teeth! But, as fast as she is losing them, the new ones are coming in. We are definitely watching her food when she eats and trying to slow her down a little in eating everything so that we can make sure she is actually chewing her food. She seems to be doing well so far, and I think most of the puppy teeth are out now. She certainly has been a huge fan of ice cubes and frozen peanut butter kongs this week as you can imagine! Unlike her front teeth, we've either found or been able to dig out of her mouth most of these back teeth, so we have a nice little collection now. I guess the puppy tooth fairy needs to come soon!

Thank you all for your continued encouragement and support as we continue this adventure with Emmy. We are certainly loving every step of this journey (especially now that Emmy's house-broken and spring is around the corner!).