BATH... and then play!!!

Well, this week Bella hasn't been smelling all that great. So, when I got home from being gone all day I gave her a bath first thing! Then we played for a bit before her bedtime.





She doesn't like to take a bath too much, but today she did pretty well! Here are some pictures of that experience:










Playing fetch is something she's super good at! We play outside when the weather is nice. If not, inside we play! I'll throw her rope in another room and this is what she'll do:


(Here eyes look a little spooky here, but that's not really what she looks like... just in case you were wondering!) :)





She's super cute when she drops her toy right next to me because she's just waiting for me to get excited about it!




Occasionally she will plays with it for a bit before bringing it to me. She's getting way too big and is starting to be too smart for her own good.





I'm in the process of teaching Bella how to stand for long periods of time. It's hard for her to remember what she's supposed to do because she gets too excited about the posibility of a treat. :)

Last Minute Photo Shoot...

So, I have been wanting to take updated pictures... I had plenty of good hair/outfit days, but on those days I was too busy for a photo shoot.

Well, I was at class all day (one of which is a water aerobics class where I happened to wipe off most of my makeup and soak the bottom half of my hair/head).

On top of all that, the first thing that I did when I got home was change into play clothes so that Bella won't ruin any more of my 'nice' things.

Anyhow, that is why this photo shoot wasn't very big and I wasn't particularly 'dressed for the occasion' and then some! :)

The point of this all was to just show you how big Bella is getting already so focus less on me and more on her! Thanks!






So, Bella was a lot easier to photograph when she was a pup... now she's just an overgrown baby, bless her heart! :)






In this last picture Bella was supposed to be laying by me, but she kept moving... finally she layed down exactly how she was supposed to, but not quite in the spot that I had in mind...

One of these things is NOT like the others..

Bella and I are visiting Elisa's house for the next week...


Bruce and Elisa got their girls a puppy for christmas and are babysitting her sister until she goes home (Greg and Brooke's house).

I was excited to see how much bigger Bella was since they are all (to the best of our knowledge) the same age; Sadie and Shay are golden-cockers and Bella is a pure golden.




Can you tell which one is mine and which are theirs!?! :)

Bella's Tricks...

So, I'm trying to train Bella to do all sorts of things. I might have started a few too many, so I'm not going to add anything just yet. But, if you have anything you can think of that would be fun for her to learn, feel free to let me know! :)


Here are her tricks so far:

Sit
Stay
Shake (shaking hands, not her body)
Lay down
Crawl
Roll over
and Jump

Some of these need a little more work. I want her to be able to eventually do some of them without the hand signals (especially lay down and crawl... those ones hurt my hands because she scratches them all up). She can sit without a signal now!

It's so much fun to train her, cause she's a lot more motivated by food than my rat was. :)

Rat Olympics 2008!!!

Well, it finally happened... the semester is now over! I had a great time learning all sorts of things this semester. I'm sad some of my classes are over, but happy that I get a 3 1/2 week break before starting another BUSY semester! :)

Yesterday morning we had our Rat Olympics! I was pretty nervous and figured Splinter wouldn't do much of anything under pressure (mostly because of the people standing around and all the noise). We started the hour getting Splinter all warmed up...

There was a rat that went through the maze in 16 seconds and I figured we were doomed on that one. We gave him a couple warm up runs through the maze while the teacher checked other tricks. When she came back we were ready. I put splinter at the begining and he made it to the end in 9 seconds!!! No one beat it!

Next Splinter got to show off his Skinner box abilities (pressing the levers for food), he did well with this one too! Each rat had to show the maze, Skinner box and then their special trick. Splinter actually did his special trick! He didn't do it too well, but he did it and I was definately a suprise!

For his special trick, Splinter showed them how he could get up on his wooden platform when we said UP. Then he would stand on the platform real tall when we motioned to him. But his best trick by far was how he can walk. He didn't walk too far, but when I worked with him before he was walking all the way across the table (which is about three feed wide)!

Well, now it's time for Christmas!! I need to potty train Bella and then I'm going to be traveling and visiting family!!! :) Hurray!

Day 2!!!...

Okay, I'm not going to post every day of Bella's life, but I had to post some pictures today...


Well, I went shopping this morning for couple/few hours. I went to four different stores in order to try and get the best deals. Well, after going to get food and a dog carrier I came back with a few extra things! :)


I got Bella a cute sweater and coat, but when I came home I found that they didn't fit at all, so I took it back and got an even better (and bigger) sweater and the same coat, but bigger. :) The coat is a little too big, but the sweater is so cute on her!

Here's her pink and brown coat...

Here's Bella sporting her new sweater...

Here's a side view of the sweater. It has X's and O's all on it.

The fact that some are big and some are small reminds me of Nacho Libre.

Here's her new harness. It's quite large, but I want it to last a long time.

Here is Bella's harness and leash hanging on my wall.


Bella wanted me to stop taking pictures and just play.

She has such a cute puppy face!

She loves playing with the leaves!

I love when her ears flop when she runs! :)

Mom decided to take some pictures of us together!

Last, but certainly not least...

Grandma had a fun idea to put the dog on our horse, so this is for all my nieces and nephews!!! I love you guys!