Emmy's ACTUAL Birthday

Today was Emmy's actual birthday! After such a huge celebration this weekend we just celebrated a little together as a family...which included us waking her up this morning with a huge HAPPY BIRTHDAY! She's still trying to recover from all the excitement this weekend...that's what "old age" does to you! As a part of our little celebration we gave Emmy a peanut butter sandwich which was soooo YUMMY! Thanks to Purrs & Gurrs in Fishers, IN for making all of her wonderful birthday treats (www.purrsandgurrs.com).

Happy Birthday Emmy!!!

Our little puppy is now one year old!!!! The weekend of her birthday we spent with Bill's parents, and before we celebrated Bill's brother's birthday Saturday celebrated Emmy's birthday, with a little puppy cake for her and everything. Emmy really liked the frosting, and that she got to play with Bill's Mom, Dad, and brothers (you guys are so much fun). Now that we are back home, Emmy is catching up on sleep from all the fetch, frisbee, and football that she played over the weekend with Bill's brothers.

Oh Bob, can I have the toy now? Look how good I am behaving...

I got it!!!! Emmy is great at catching, and flying through the air!!!

Emmy loves to watch airplanes

Hmmm, what is this, woah, that tastes good!!!!

Bye Bye Summer

Summer brought lots of fun picnics, outings, and trips to other people's houses!

We even had our friend Duke over to visit...but playing got everyone really tired out!

Emmy also had her first experience swimming...she really liked pool life...such a privileged dog!

But most of all we just enjoyed spending time together!

We apologize for not updating the blog as often recently! We have been enjoying summer a little too much and not keeping you all updated on Emmy! Now that it's September, it's time to say good-bye to summer...and hello to a fun fall. And, we thought we'd recap a few of the fun things that Emmy did at the end of the summer and what's going on with us now!

Emmy has grown quite a bit even in the past month or so. She has really turned into quite a beautiful dog (but of course we're biased!). She is now weighing in just around 60 lbs. And we're pretty sure most of her growing is now done. Look at this gorgeous dog!



Emmy has continued doing lots of her usual outings to work, school, stores, etc. Toward the end of the summer we started bringing her to church with us on Sunday as well...including this morning! She has been doing quite well with it. The biggest struggle...is getting her to sit still and not army crawl under the pews to visit other people. We're sure that a lot of that will come with age. This morning after church, she was exhausted...which most of the outings still do!

Sleeping in the car on the way home from church.

What a sleepy dog!

Emmy also has a new friend that she has made! Bill and Amy's friends, Ray & Jenn, have a 1 yr. old, Jordan, who has become quite attached to Emmy. They love to play together...and Jordan has become so used to Emmy joining us at meal times with them (they live on campus too) that he always checks under the table to see if she is there!

Emmy, giving Jordan a good sniff to make sure he's ok to hang out with.

1 yr old + 11 month old dog = someone is bound to be blurry in every picture!

And as a last update...Emmy turned 11 months on Saturday! HAPPY 11 MONTHS "E" PUPPIES! To celebrate, we got Emmy some gourmet puppy cookies that were covered in yogurt! YUMMY!

Getting her 11 month birthday cookies!

Elkie comes for a visit

This is Emmy's sister Elkie

Elkie sleeping with her blanket

Elkie and Bill and the football game

A few weeks ago, we did a puppy swap with Elkie who is one of Emmy's sisters! For three days, Elkie came to stay with us, while Emmy went to live with her parents. It certainly was fun to see what another dog is like and we had fun with Elkie. We could definitely see how dogs grow differently based on their surroundings. Being in a college residence hall, there is always noise of doors opening, people walking by, and we live near train tracks so that adds quite a bit too. Emmy has become so accustomed to it that we don't think about it much...but Elkie definitely noticed.

While Elkie was here we got a chance to go to a community picnic being held on Hope's campus and then we went to the first part of Hope's home football game! She did very well at the picnic and had a lot of fun!

Thanks for coming to stay with us Elkie!

New School Year

Another school year has started which means that we have a whole new group of residents! Because of this, we held another "Meet Emmy night" so our new residents could meet our wonderful furry friend and also get all their questions answered about what training a Paws dog is like. We had a great turn out and Emmy loved meeting all of her new friends!

Welcome to College East!

Pool Party

As a social outing for the foster puppies (and the owners) PAWS hosted a pool party for all the puppies in their yard. They had pools all over the place for the puppies to play in (see the video), and a potluck for all the owners. It was lots of fun for Emmy and for Bill and Amy as they watched their little girl splash and play with the other dogs. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers, Emmy is heading in for her X-rays to determine if she is physically ok for service work on August 20th. We are hoping to hear that she has a clean bill of health!!!

Emmy and Emma her sister

Bobbing for treats

Emmy playing in her own pool (don't distract her she is focus on playing with those toys)

The life of a dog...

To be a dog...

I like to color!

Splish, Splash in the sprinklers!

Lindsay & Josie (who is 4.5 lbs!)

Emmy & Josie learn to play together

Josie attempting to play with Emmy's big toys

A few days ago, we went to take Emmy out to the bathroom and we noticed that the sprinkler system was on...but one of them was broken causing an "Old Faithful"-like guiser to erupt on our front lawn. So what did Emmy decide to do? Play in the water of course! It was pretty cute to watch her running through the sprinklers all over the lawn.

Then later that day, Emmy had a visitor! Our friends Chris and Lindsay just got a King Charles Spaniel named Josie. Josie is still very young, but she also was the runt of the litter, so she'll be very small (max. 10 lbs) when she does grow. (To put that in relation to something else...when Emmy came home at 7 weeks old she was 12.5 lbs!). Anyway, Josie came over to meet Emmy and they did very well together. We weren't sure how it would go with such a difference in size of the dogs...but Emmy was very careful with Josie who had quite the brave little spirit! By the end of the night they were good friends..even sharing toys! Thanks for visiting Josie!