Raelyn has entered the building!

Woohoo! The long waited day has finally arrived and without further ado, I introduce....Raelyn (pronounced Ray-lynn, we think). Raelyn is an 8 week old female black lab weighing in at about 10 lbs, most of that being skin. She was born February 21, 2009 to Cabby and Dorinda. She is super cute and lots of fun.

I picked her up from Guide Dogs and put her in her crate for the ride home and she did fabulous. A few minutes of whining, but I was whining at that point too because it felt like it was 100 degrees in the car. After we started driving and had the AC full blast, she calmed right down and went to sleep for the entire 1 hour drive home.

We arrived home and she was so excited to explore and sniff. She was very mellow at the beginning and easy going. Once she found out that she couldn't play with the kitties and was unable to romp around free since she was on a leash, she got a bit irrate. Raelyn wanted nothing more than to play with Shadow, but Shadow was all "Oh hell no." Raelyn whined and barked at Shadow which is definately not the best way to make kitty want to play with her, but whatever. The cats are keeping a wide distance, so Raelyn will figure it out eventually.

Dale came home and she warmed right up to him as Dale is the ultimate cross-species chick magnet. Raelyn adores all things Dale. Loves to play with him. Loves to sit next to him. Loves to sleep in his lap.

She has become comfortable in her new home really fast. We are becoming better at predicting when she wants to pee, but she is so fast luckily we have tile floors! Pooping has all been
outside and she gives good warning so that's great. She'll have us trained in no time.

She REALLY loves to chew on anything she can put in her mouth. She likes her drag line and tie down cable a lot. We are trying to bait and switch with more appropriate chew toys, so we'll see how that goes. She discovered that our deck is not made of wood! Apparently it is very tasty and made of chewy fake plastic wood. I sprayed some Bitter Apple on it, so hopefully she loses interest quickly.

She is not a big fan of the tie down. Whining quite a bit because she is so frustrated. When she is calm we will go over to her and pet her. After a throwing quite a fit for a few minutes, she laid down and went to sleep.

"Uncle" Frank came over to visit on his way home from work. So Raelyn had her first official visitor. She was more interested in sleeping at the time, so she didn't care much about Frank. Our cats love Frank as they remember him as the guy with seafood breath, so he will have to eat something more appropriate when he comes over next time.

She seems to love her crate already. It was funny, when she was tired after playing with Dale after he came home, she walked right into her crate and plopped down. Hopefully that bodes well for sleeping in the crate at night!

Our first day was a success and everyone is still alive. Raelyn is full of it, so it will be quite an adventure! :)