October 29, 2008
Before:
(Panther slept on Tim’s head for close to an hour)
(Panther likes pillows)
After:
New haircut!
Panther is obsessed with lying on this wonderful handmade blanket (thanks, Sonja!). I also love this red blanket and whenever I use it, Panther runs from across the room just so she can lie on it.
Oh, and that green thing is the bow selected for her by the groomer. Green feather poof with a diamond center…nice fashion statement.
October 22, 2008
Panther keeps getting new experiences. Most recently, she’s discovered one of the great joys of fall. When the wind picks up, it blows leaves across the ground towards her. (Like in The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo sees the leaves blowing towards him.) Well, to her, it’s like there are suddenly dozens of delicious toys flying right at her. She can’t even decide which one to chase after. If just one leaf is blowing, however, she’s all over it.
September 11, 2008
Panther likes to do errands outside with us. Currently, she is helping pick weeds from our front yard. What a helper.
August 22, 2008
Panther is now a big dog. She can run up and down the steps, and can even pause partway down to turn around and make sure you are coming with her. She also knows what it means to go upstairs, go downstairs, and go outside. She’s still pretty small, so when she is on two steps she is almost completely vertical, probably about 70 degrees or so.
August 10, 2008
Panther’s not interested in breakfast this morning - or any morning recently. She’s still on Montana time, and probably misses her Montana friends.
July 16, 2008
Okay, folks. Panther went in for her first haircut and grooming. I gotta say, we don’t love it. We might even hate it. So chime in and let us know - how bad is it?
Before:
After:
At least you can see her eyes. And the brown is more noticeable in her coat. But her hair is so short. And as you can see, they left it long on top so we can put a pretty bow in it. Apparently, they don’t know us very well.
June 23, 2008
Bobblehead Panther: coming soon to a store near you.
June 23, 2008
June 23, 2008
We just expanded the area that Panther can now roam in. She has been nearly accident-free indoors for over a week, so I’m optimistic. Two things that worry me: there is now a corner where she can’t be seen from where we usually sit on the couch, and the spot she learned to sit at when she needed to go to the bathroom has moved, since she can now go to the door to the garage instead of just the barrier near that door. Hopefully she’ll figure out quickly where she needs to be to let us know it’s time to go out.
June 19, 2008
Yesterday we had to smear peanut butter on Panther in order to get the gum off her leg hair. Late last night we found more gum stuck in her paw pad. Her smell has morphed into nutty mint.
June 15, 2008
Panther went to her first puppy kindergarten class. She is one of four Shih Tzus in the class, so she has plenty of new friends. One of the boy puppies wanted to be more than just friends, but Panther held his advances off rather forcefully.
We were a little worried that she would never settle down. She is very calm around the house, but when she meets strangers or other dogs, she gets very excited and must meet the immediately. It was very hard for her to pay attention to her new command (lying down) with all the other noises and lights and people and dogs in the big room. But when we took her outside to pee, she flopped down from sheer exhaustion. That gave me a chance to reward her, and by the end of the hour she was lying down for a treat like the very best of the dogs.
June 14, 2008
To the right is Panther’s favorite chair to go exploring for dust bunnies by crawling. She’s also taken to gnawing on our coffee table when no one is watching.
June 10, 2008
I think we have been doing a good job with Panther, overall, but there is one area we haven’t been so great at. We know that her crate is supposed to be a safe haven for her, a place she is comfortable in, can go to when she is stressed or scared or tired. To do that, we were supposed to encourage her to be there. Well, she has learned that when she hears the opening of the closet where we keep her treats, she books it into her crate, waiting attentively for her reward. However, most other times she’s afraid to go near it for fear that we will close the door, keeping her from all the fun that is outside. We make her crate as fun and comfortable as possible, but it’s not been enough. Today, she wanted to get one of her toys out of her crate, but she wouldn’t go in the door because I might close it, so she tried to pull the toy out through the side. Oh, well. We’ll have to work on that.
May 27, 2008
We’ve shrunk the area to which Panther has access, in the hope that she will more quickly learn to use the bathroom outside. It’s been pretty successful so far. We would have done this sooner, but there was no good way to restrict the area. However, this has also meant that she has spent more time exploring the nooks and crannies of the living room. She now likes to search for dust bunnies behind the end table or under the chair. Most excitingly for her, she has begun to hop up the steps one at a time. She is currently sitting on the fourth step. She’s too scared to go back down and too scared to move up.
May 22, 2008
Panther has a number of toys she likes, but she generally prefers soft toys to hard. Probably her favorite thing to play with is a paper towel roll. When we go through a roll of paper towels (which is pretty often given the number of messes we clean up), she plays with the cardboard inner roll. She chases it, bats it, pounces on it, carries it in her mouth, chews on it. Recently, she has been knocking it under the coffee table (which has maybe 4″ clearance), getting down on her belly, and trying to pull it back out. Once she gets it out, she does it all over again. When she gets bored, she finds some shoes or slippers to sit on.
May 21, 2008
Sitting at the dining room table yesterday, I thought, “It sure smells like pee in here.” Then I remembered: we have a puppy who’s favorite place is the rug under the dining room table. No place on earth brings her as much satisfaction as that place does. It’s where she plays, where she takes her treats, and (if we are not watching) where she relieves herself.
I guess when puppy is no longer a puppy, we’ll need to get a new rug.
May 18, 2008
Panther at the Park - she found 2 ticks to take home as well as something that upset her stomach.
May 16, 2008
Panther loves to walk, sit, and sleep on a variety of things with different textures. Perhaps her very favorite are slippers. Here she is taking a slipper-y nap.
May 10, 2008
May 09, 2008
May 04, 2008
Nicole and I are proud to introduce Panther.
She is our Shih Tzu puppy. At last weighing she was 3 lbs. 2 oz. Her hair is black with streaks of brown and a white tummy.
She has no namesake, although her name does connect her with the best of the felines, Nicole’s hometown, a great movie, and a great TV show.
Watch her play: Panther Playing
3 responses so far ↓
1 abby wrote // May 25, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Don’t forget the greatest dog toy ever (according to Speak) - An empty 20 oz bottle with about 10 pieces of kibble stuck inside.
2 timothy paul yenter said // May 27, 2008 at 9:32 am
Abby, Panther does like the plastic bottle with peanut butter inside, but it’s also her favorite to bark at as she plays, so she doesn’t get it very often.
3 Tom added // Jul 18, 2008 at 11:48 am
Now if you could just shorten her tail, give her a brown vest, and make her walk upright, you’d have your own little Ewok. Please, let her hair grow back out!
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