New Coat

When we were visiting my grandparents for Thanksgiving I mentioned

to my grandma that Mulan needed a coat. This was something she had not

needed in Texas being that is rarely rained and was not nearly as cold as Ohio.

A couple of days later we headed out to the store and bought her a brand new dog

coat. It is really nice and good quality. It is like a mini horse coat. Here is a picture of her

in it. . .

P.S. Hello Rose and Tjodie and Eddie:) Thanks for reading my blog. I miss you all! Mulan says "Hi" and says that she misses playing with Taco and Chico (If you can call it that:)

Extreme Makeover Home Edition!

Guess what? In Whitehall one of the nearby towns, they had Extreme Makeover Home Edition building a house for a family of nine. The reason they were redoing the house for them was that the father had been one of the firefighters at the Trade Towers on Sept 11th.

We went to visit the site on Tuesday and we got to meet two of the designers! First Tanya came up and we got to meet her and then Ed came up and we talked to him for a while. We also saw Tye (though only from a distance). It was a very unique experience:)

Do you remember when I said I was teaching Mulan how to turn? I was just telling my mom the other day that I couldn't really think of a place that we would be able to actually use the command.

But when we got our picture taking with Ed, Mulan had gotten turned around and was backwards and I had really wanted her face to be in the picture so I quicky commanded her to "turn" and she turned right around and plopped down! I was so happy that one of her commands actually paid off:) If you notice in the picture she is facing a little to the side that is a result of her turning at the last minute.

Today we went back to visit and see how the house had turned out. It was beautiful! Unluckily we were unable to stay and see the family arrive because it started sleeting! It was freezing! Welcome to Ohio. . . .

P.S. Go OSU!!!!!!!

The first picture is the day that they demoed the house and the second pic is of the house all finished. The last two pictures are of Cara, Mulan, and I with Ed and Tanya. The last pic is of Tye standing on top of one of the trucks they used for hauling the junk away. He is like a big kid! He crawled around all the wreckage when they were demoing the house and he loved it.

At Least Mulan Liked It:)

Yesterday I stayed home by myself all day while my family went
to church because I wasn't feeling well. It is probably just working to
hard and the cold weather. Sometimes I just feel stretched thin. Like
Bilbo says on "Lord of the Rings" he says, "like butter spread over too much bread."
Luckily I have Mulan and my family around me to keep me going:)
We took Mulan over to a new doggy park. She loved it! It was a huge fenced in area with
toys, water bowls, and even a small pond for the dogs to explore. We spent over 45 minutes
there just letting her run around. I think she liked just being a dog for once.

Turn-in

Mulan now has a official turn-in date. It will be in March. We were leaning toward
that but we haven't been sure until yesterday. When we were talking to Sarah at
the kennel we were saying we would like to know if it was going to be in Feburary or
March and she said that all her paperwork says March. So we will continue to
raise her for another five months or so. It seems long now but I know it will fly by.
We don't yet know how much we are going to miss her:(

New Commands

CCI has sent out a e-mail saying that there are two new commands we need to teach the dogs. We are working with Mulan on "turn" right now. This will help in grocery stores. I didn't realize how big she had gotten until I tried to move her out of the grocery store aisle. So this will be a nifty little command. I put her into the bath tub and used a piece of food to guide her into a turn. I said turn as she did it. We have been working on it for almost a week and she is getting pretty good at it. I wanted to show you how much she has grown compared to her old puppy pictures. . . .