The first night

At about 10pm last night all three of us were starting to look rather sleepy so Adam and I popped a tired looking Inko into her crate and headed upstairs. She whined and howled for no more than 3 minutes and then settled down - very good start!

Didn't hear a peep out of her all night until just after 5.30. I (Paula) dragged myself out of bed and headed downstairs, a little bleary-eyed, and was met by a very excited Inko! When she stopped yapping (briefly!) I whipped the door open quick so she could get out before she started again so that I wasn't rewarding yapping! She was soooo excited to see me, bless her - made the early start worth it!! I quickly led her out into the garden for a morning wee, as she hadn't been all night by the look of things in her crate. She seems to be getting the knack of how to get to the garden now and, more importantly, what she needs to do when she gets there! Glad it was dry, and glad I didn't stand on the slug on the decking!

I ummed and aahed about whether I should pop her back in her crate for a bit at this point and head back to bed or whether to stay up. In the end I curled up on the sofa in the hope that she might join me and we could have a snooze together with me knowing where she is (and not worrying that she is eating wires, furniture etc...!) Unfortunately she was quite awake at this point and thought that climbing all over me and trying to eat my hair was much for fun than lying still so I ended up popping her on the floor on the new vet bed mat we have in lounge!!

Today she has switched between being very sleepy and going quite crazy! She still likes playing with her toys on the blue mat in her enclosed area but she is also now playing with them on the vet bed 'mat' in our lounge! So she has spent much of today moving toys between the two!! She has been having a good explore of the garden and has been much braver doing that today, covering much more of it than she did yesterday. She also started pouncing through the flower beds - luckily our planting is somewhat untidy anyway so no damage to be done! She has discovered a real liking of leaves, mud, stones and especially sticks! We have been doing a lot of 'Inko, let's see what you've got there' today - good practice for opening her mouth as we must have done that about a hundred times today to remove various bits of garden!!

Another new favourite thing of hers that has started today is taking the manky bit of vet bed out of her crate and bringing it into the lounge...and then taking it back again...and then coming back to the lounge with it...and so on!! This, it would appear, is much fun!! This evening she took it one step further as she dragged the big bit of vet bed out of the crate that we had put in and doing the same with that! Very funny to see her dragging something that is easily twice as long as her around the room. I just hope she doesn't try and pull the big blue mat out of the enclosed area next!!! There's a short video at the bottom - sorry it's not great quality but I took it on my phone - notice how she stops for a quick snack before carrying - well this vet bed moving is hard work...she needs to keep her energy levels up!

We have started doing a little bit of training with her today, we've decided to use clicker training - we started by introducing her to the clicker and getting her used to the idea that a click means a treat or a cuddle so she knows when she's doing the right thing...Inko, it turns out, is a big fan of cheese! I even managed to get her sitting on command which she still seems to be doing (without cheese) so will have to see whether that knowledge has still been retained tomorrow.

She also had her first go with her lead on today - the first thing she did was grab hold of it and, of course, took it to her blue mat - problem was, because it was attached to her, it followed her when she left the mat! She seemed to think this was a great game so I quickly grabbed hold of the lead so she didn't eat it! She didn't seem to keen at first but then when I just wandered along with her, holding it very loosely, she seemed not to worry too much about it, although did turn round to bite it a couple of times. Will try and get her more used to it tomorrow.

After a bit of crazy running around and toy playing (on the mats of course!) she has now settled back down again.


Might have to wake her up shortly to tire her out really well before we head up to bed in the hope that she settles as quickly as she did last night, and in the hope she'll stay quiet slightly longer in the morning...if it's another 5.30 I think I might go back to bed tomorrow!

It's first vet trip tomorrow for first jabs and mircochipping - hope she doesn't hate me afterwards!!