yep - i have my puppy! we picked her up yesterday afternoon and have been on a very very steep learning curve since. we've never had a dog before, so living with a 6 month old untrained puppy has proved to be quite difficult at times. we took her straight to the vet last night and worked out all the finer points of doggy life (fleas, worms, diet, training etc) and also got her microchipped and bought some treats. there was also some confusion when the certificate that her previous owner gave us said that she was a male dog born in 2001! now, i'm not a dog expert, but i definitely can tell that she is not full grown and has very white teeth which tells me that she's a puppy! all the confusion was cleared up when my vet called the previous vet and found a birth date (22/1/04, making her 26 1/2 wks old) and medical history (she was 2 months late for her vaccinations!).
i have since discovered that she responds really well to food and gets quite annoyed if she doesn't get a treat or a toy thrown in the air for something good that she's done!
being untrained, she has several bad habits like biting, chewing, jumping and ignoring us as well as eating pot plants and carrying around glass bottles for recycling, but she has settled in really well and seems to be toilet trained as i haven't seen any poos yet! :) she also takes food from my hand really gently which is good.
i was sick yet again today (grrr!) but i still managed to fit in plenty of play time with her, and taught her to 'stay'. she's pretty smart (being a labrador) so she picked it up very quickly although i kind of taught her a mix between 'sit' and 'stay', so now when i say 'stay', she just sits down still. a BIG improvement from the hypo little thing who arrived yesterday. i can't wait to get her into dog obedience school!
i'm a little confused with my cat's behaviour though - i know he has issues with dogs, although he usually likes to stick up for himself so i expected there to be some sort of scuffle between him and Lilly, but that hasn't happened yet. so far he's completely avoided her and she doesn't even know he's there! he stays inside all day, especially since it's cold, then goes outside for a little bit to do his business, then he's back in again. that's good for him though since he has feline aids so he really needs to stay inside away from other cats. it will help too if Lilly learns to keep other cats away from my house.