The puppy is almost 5 months old. This is a good age to get a puppy. They already can hold their bladder longer than most beerfilled dodger fans. You don't have to rush them outside every time they get up to pee a thimble sized pee. Violet can sleep through the night, mostly upside down, and not be dying to get up at 6 am. I remember with Jed I would lie in bed awake but not moving because if I moved he'd wake up so happily ready to go out. Violet wakes up happy, but in the way of a lazily blinking french model.
She is a leaper though. If you throw a ball for her (also she likes balls way more than Becky or Huck, balls are a reason to live) she will run after the ball but also she will LEAP like a deer escaping a fire, like she's trying to help her gymnastics team win at the olympics. She has FLAIR.
In the morning when I sit with Bess at breakfast for the ten minutes before school where I see her and she watches tv on her phone while eating waffles, and I sit on a stool leaning against the counter on the service side of the kitchenbar, drinking tea and eating some kind of bread with nutella on it, the PUPPY will bring every single one of her toys for you to throw down the hall. She will stick with one for awhile and then perhaps desiring another shape to chew, she will go to her basket or the floor and find another toy and bring THAT for you to throw. Then when she gets tired of running she will just go and chew the BASKET luckily that you bought at goodwill in palm springs because you knew it too would be eaten.
I like her ability to have a good time no matter what we are doing. If I'm watering the new plants I planted and am trying not to kill, she will put her entire face in the hose. If you're walking on a new street learning the leash, she wants to meet EVERYONE and see every single thing she can in every direction all at once.
If I'm in the pool and make her get in for a bit when she gets out she chases Huck around, getting ON the glass table and leaping off of it to attack him and chase him around the whole pool and barn.
If I'm cleaning up the horses and feeding chickens she is leaping through the flock to scatter them like snowflakes, and then running a victory lap.
By 8 at night she is flat on the tile, because she wants us to know that puppyhood is tiring and don't disturb her. She will eventually lie with her body near you somehow, because the being next to your warm people when you're sleepy. Comfort.
We lost Beck and we still miss the most solid dog we ever had. Why do you never know how solid a dog you have until she is sputtering and then gone. Poor Huck is still in shock and finding his footing in this world of our house. I think we all are.
But Violet doesn't care that we're still mutely sore in the heart. She reminds us that there is so much to see and the beach! And the sand and the seagulls and the running and the hose. have you seen the hose
