Dakota Gets Bigger

 Dakota is getting bigger and bigger by the day and luckily as she gets bigger and older she is also starting to become a less mischievous...I think I hope.  We had to get rid of the chickens because Dakota would not leave them alone particularly the white chicken who insisted on escaping daily. I came home after taking Derek's Dad to the hospital to hang with Diane and asked the boys where Dakota was.  They had put her outside without checking the coast was clear of chickens.  Sure enough Dakota had the white chicken by the neck.  It seemed to be hanging by a thread. 

 Derek was at the hospital with his Mom so I went down the street the Jay Riley and balled on his front lawn begging him to come kill this suffering chicken for me because I couldn't bare to do it.  By the time he got down there this chicken was hopping in and out of the coop and drinking water  So, I enlisted Christina Paskett and family to help.  She said one of her friends had stitched up one of her chickens after a dog attack.  That gave me an idea...I could stitch up this chicken.  So I broke into my office, got supples, and Christina and her boys helped me hold the chicken still and shine a light while I stitched up the poor malled white chicken.  

 

She did great and laid an egg every day after.  But then not a week later, Kota got a hold of her again.  Didn't cause nearly as much damage, but that was when I agreed we needed to give the chickens away.  We found them a nice new home with a family in Lindon that had basically a chicken mansion for a coup in their backyard.  We need to break her of the habit of getting out our couch, but she is so dang cute and everyone loves snuggling with her so it's been hard. 

I have bought her a mat for the floor.  We call it place and she likes it and is lying there more and on the couch less.  We also need to break the habit of her sleeping on our bed.  

Currently, we have a thing going where she sleep in her crate until about 6:30am then I feed her breakfast let her go potty and then she jumping into bed with Derek and I and sleeps so quietly for another hour or two more.  I really like the extra sleep, so this bad habit is proving hard to break.  She loves hiking and I love hiking with her.  It's kind of fun to have a dog with endless energy again (sometimes).  She can't quite be trusted off leash yet, because I can't trust her to Come when I call her.  She is getting better at Come and "Touch" (our rebranded Come because she was doing so bad at the Come) as long as there is nothing more exciting distracting her from listening.

I took this pic of her with Dakota by a BYU football to show Derek that even our dog is a BYU fan. 

She is already leery of the vet.  When we went for her last round of vaccinations she was hiding behind me.  

She did not like me trying to work on the couch and ignore her one day.

 But now she is getting to the point where if she has a good walk every day she is a pretty good dog.