Doggie Doggie!

It took 2 months, three weeks and 6 days to get Claire to touch one of the dogs but on Friday we had a breakthrough! Since bringing her home, she has been terrified of our dogs....all animals really. It doesn't matter to us if she wants to pet the goats at the zoo or not, but it's a little bit of problem that she screams bloody murder if one of our three dogs gets anywhere near her!

In case you don't know, we have one large black lab that we gave the boys for their 7th birthday! Her name is Georgia and she is harmless but I can see why Claire would be afraid of all 95 pounds of her! The other two dogs, Roxy and Lola are true lap dogs. They are sisters from a litter of Pomeranian-chihuahua mixes that we got right after we signed on to adopt, two years ago. They weren't "mixed" very well though, and one looks all Chihuahua while the other looks all Pomeranian! It's cute!

We decided to start with the less intimidating, small dogs so, about a month ago we started letting them in the house while Claire was playing. She would squeal if they came near her but otherwise didn't seem to mind them! Then, all of a sudden, on Friday, she decided to pet one of them...on the backside ONLY. That wasn't so bad, so she pet the other one. Then she decided she really liked petting them and she started calling to them to come to her! One licked her on the hand and she proclaimed that "it tickle"! Now she offers her hand to be licked! Her eyes flutter like crazy, something that she's done since we've known her whenever she is not sure of something. But, we made progress!

Unfortunately, Georgia doesn't rate yet. Still to big and scary, I suspect! That's okay, Georgia is patient. Roxy and Lola are just so happy to be back in the house and back in our laps! Poor little Lola had to be shaved a few weeks ago due to inattention! With all our trips out of town and all the time she was spending outside, we completely forgot that she needs to be brushed practically everyday. We got back from our last trip to St. Louis and she was one big matted fur-ball! She had a full body of Pomeranian fluff and it was matted in huge knots, full of leaves and trash. Poor baby. I just had to shave her down to nothing so she can start over!

Don't forget to turn the music player off at the bottom to hear the video!

Petting Roxy