Dan & Robbyne & Daisy's Excellent Adventure: October 2015

Hi Everybody! Daisy Jones-Klein here. Usually, I like to tell y’all about all the things to see and do around here in the Land of Enchantment. But today’s a good day for reminiscing. It’s my tenth anniversary! Yay!

You see, it was just about ten years ago that I adopted my Peeps. I’d been staying at a Russell Rescue home near Harrisonburg, Virginia. My Peeps happened to stop in, spent a little time with me to let me work my charms (the Sad Little Puppy Eyes™; you know the look!), and the rest, as they say, is history. They took me back with them to live in our Forever Home in Virginia, up until three years ago when we took our epic road trip to our new Forever Home out here in New Mexico.

Ten Years! Wow, the bookies sure took a beating on that bet, as they say. Of all my Forever Homes – and I’ve had more than a couple – this is by far my most Foreverest. No one ever said that training your Peeps is easy, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of this.

Training Peeps is tough work! I speak from experience when I say it can take a few times to get it right. And, truth be told, it can work the other way too. I think that in the early days, my Peeps just didn’t understand that biting neighbors’ ankles is a simple way to say "Howdy"; that doorbells are the universal starter pistols for Jack Russell Terrier barking frenzies; and that the phrase “stop eating when you’re full” is simply gibberish that makes no sense to me at all.

But eventually, we came to understand each other a little better. They became fans of Cesar Millan and his show The Dog Whisperer, and belong long they were all trained! Now I recognize that not all Peeps respond to training in the same way, so I can also recommend some excellent advice recently published in that insightful journal, The Onion. Try these handy tips!:

Tips for Training Your Dog

Start with simple commands like “sit” before working your way up to the more complicated ones like “fill the gaping void in my life.”
Remember that consistently good behavior will take time. You’re letting a wild animal loose in your house.
Set a good example for your dog by never chasing after squirrels, no matter how badly you want to.
It’s important to establish dominance. Show your dog who’s boss by cleaning up its waste and paying for all its food.
Consistency is key. Remember to use the same expletive every time your dog chews up your shoes.
Dogs crave clear direction, so be sure to schedule yours for quarterly performance reviews.
Remain patient during training sessions with your dog, as English is not its first language.
Rather than simply saying “no” to your pet, engage it in a constructive dialogue about the moralistic implications of the undesired behavior.

And speaking of keep trying ‘til you get it right, here’s a FUN FACT: It’s sometimes said that if you practice something 10,000 times, you become really expert at it. Well, bear with me while I do some math. I was about 4 to 6 years old when I found my Peeps at Russell Rescue. (No one’s really sure about my age, but a lady never tells, anyway.) So that makes me at least 13. With 365 days per year, that’s probably 5000 days for moi. And with at least two walks per day, and most of them being “meaningful” (and I think you know what I’m talking about here), then I’ve probably delivered over 10,000 times. So I guess that makes me an expert Puppy Pooper! I hope that all of you can achieve your dreams and achievements as well as I've achieved mine.

Do anniversaries make you nostalgic? They sure do for me, especially when I realize that in dog-years it’s like a 70^th anniversary. I’ve been looking through some of my picture albums from the early days with the Peeps, and comparing them to my recent pix. One thing's for certain: I still look good!

And despite all the changes and activities over that time, it seems that in so many of the important ways, we revert to form, and what was good then is still good now. For instance, there’s pinning down sunbeams: