Welcome home, Kelly

Introducing the newest member of our household, Kelly! She's an 11-week old Aussie/Retriever mix (we are setting her birthday as 12/13/14) that we adopted from Social Tees Animal Rescue in NYC. She has a short black coat with just a tuft of white fur under her chin, a streak down her chest, and just a dab of white on her front left and rear right paw. They described her as a "medium activity, medium-sized" dog, but judging by her big floppy ears and big paws, I don't think they were right. Brian estimates that she'll end up in the 80-lb range, not the 40-lbs that I was expecting.

When we met her, she had a great personality. She was not fearful of cats, strangers, or strange noises (like jingling keys), she approached everything with curiosity and alertness, she was friendly with children, and allowed us to pick her up and hold her. We brought her home on Wednesday night, before a huge snowstorm was to hit our region. She whimpered a lot that first night, even though Brian slept next to her and Kade the whole night. Kade nipped her twice that first day, for her boisterous playful behavior, so now she gives him a wide berth when he approaches. Kade has a grumpy old man about this new puppy; if he was a human, you'd see him scoff at her every time she enters the room, wrinkle his nose with disgust, or eye-roll her antics. But he's just a Border Collie, so he takes to side-eyeing her and giving her the patented "Border Collie stare"-- the "I am so judging you right now" look.

School was cancelled on both Thursday and Friday-- I estimate we received about 10-inches of snow in total-- so we've had a lot of time to spend with her, getting her aquainted with our household rules, potty-training her, etc. She's already trained to go on wee-wee pads and she makes a lot of whining/whimpering noises before she goes, so we just rush her outdoors (on the leash, because she's still a flight-risk) to do her business; sometimes I don't even get a coat on, and just rush outdoors in the 20F weather. She's extremely food motivated, which is both good and bad. She is extremely motivated to get her food, so we've been successful in getting her to sit-stay before the food bowl goes down, to do some basic "sit" training, and so forth. But she's an incessant hound when we're trying to prepare and cook dinner, and wont stop whining when we're sitting down to eat dinner! Boy, was she a disappointed whiner after she realized she wasn't getting table scraps after we finished our dinner!