Tag: Mittelschnauzer

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Lexi’s First Birthday…

Yesterday was Lexi’s first birthday and we held a little celebration a couple of days before we left for our holidays.

She is now 1 year old and has been with us for 10 months now. We enjoy having her around a lot! Such a little joy but sometimes, just sometimes, she can be stubborn and not obey instructions such as “come here”, “stop”, “heel” etc… just because she was distracted or wanted to chase something or was just being a teenage dog. Yep, she has hit doggy teen years – sigh!

You can look back on when she first joined our family and at 5 months old posts. You will see how she has changed in her looks and size.

Here are a few photos from her first birthday celebrations:

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Lexi at 5 Months…

So we brought Lexi home when she was 9 weeks old, it has been almost 3 months and she is 5 months old now. It has been a steep learning curve but it had it’s funny, lovely moments too.

We have had quite a journey with her, medically. She has had a very serious bacterial ear infection, which took 3 weeks of treatment to clear up, immediately following that she had an eye irritation/infection, which saw her in the cone for a week. All that set her back on her vaccination schedule which means we start all over again with the vaccinations. Now it seems she has caught a cold 😦

But on the upside, we finished puppy school and are now in young dog school and it’s going good. She does not do as she is supposed to at class, but at home, it works fine and that’s the important part.

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Left to Right: Lexi August 2018, Lexi September 2018, Lexi October 2018, Lexi November 2018

Other than that, we have found out that she is definitely NOT a food-motivated dog. She does not even come when you put down her food, except when she was on the cortisone for 3 weeks and the meds made her hungry.

She is teething now and with a slight cold, i suppose going off food for a bit is usual. i just wished it was not such a struggle to get her to eat regularly. It’s a question we will have to ask the vet when we go for the next jab in a couple of weeks.

Another positive is that i think (fingers-crossed) we got the pee situation down, she only goes outside now. And she is doing better with being left for a couple hours at home, when needed.

Despite the various worries, the joys of having her around is wonderful! She is a sweet-pea and we love her!

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Meet Lexi! Our Standard Schnauzer Puppy…

Those of you are friends with me on Facebook already know that about a week and a half ago, we brought home a cute, black Standard Schnauzer (Mittelschnauzer in German) puppy named Lexi.

We had been waiting since the beginning of the year; waiting for the mating to take place, waiting for the scans confirming there are puppies, waiting for the birth and then meeting her and then waiting for her to be old enough to leave her Mama.

So how has it been? It has been wonderful, stressful, funny, worrying and all the emotions in between. Just like being a first-time parent. We are first-time “parents” to a puppy.

Now i have had dogs before but they were already adult dogs when i adopted them. Raising a puppy is very different and although i had read 1.5 books (still reading the second one) on this topic, nothing quite prepared me for the reality of it.

i had an idea of how i thought things would go in the first week. Of course, i expected it to be hard but i never expected to be at my wits’ end, wondering how i can get her to stop peeing in the house!

Well, it turns out that i was giving her too much correction for her other behaviours and made her nervous around me. But i thought i was protecting her from harmful things she should not put in her mouth or destroying our soft furnishings.

It’s a good thing the breeder we got her from is a friend from church so i didn’t have to go asking for advice in German. i got a tiny talking to about my expectations of a puppy vs an adult dog. i have to say that after i adjusted my expectations and relaxed a bit on her trying to eat every piece of leaf and bit of dirt/rock, it has been better. The fact that i can write this post is proof that we are adjusting better to each other.

Tobias really wanted Lexi to take to him, so she sleeps in his room. There was stress on both sides about liking each other at first but after going to puppy school and getting some knowledge, Tobias is now quite good with her and is more confident with her. He helps out with feeding, walking and playing with her.

Unfortunately, the husband has been unable to take part as much as he would like to because he’s constantly away for work but Lexi really likes him as a rough and tumble playmate when he is around.

So while we expect some ups and downs (hopefully more ups), we will keep calm and carry on with puppy 😉

Here are some cute pictures of Lexi for you to enjoy. You can follow Lexi on Instagram (lexischnauzer).

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