Lily Loves Elmo - Tribute To My Pet

Lily lives with me and my husband Tim, a cat named Elmo aged 13 years old and four largish tanks filled with tropical fish.
I have never had a dog, but having had six kids, I do not think that it could be that hard training a puppy!
And the advantage with Lily is that she will be trained and an adult within a much shorter time-frame.
The first thing we did with her was to enroll her/us in obedience training as we wanted to know the correct way of how to train a puppy.
Both Tim and I love to go for a walk with her where we can exercise what we learned in obedience classes as we walk, and we love to watch her running in all different directions when she is let off the lead. She is just so funny to watch!
We found very quickly that she is a cuddly dog and loves to sit in our arms and get big hugs, but I can see that might get a little difficult when she is fully grown. We thought for some reason that she was a miniature, but it turns out she is a standard schnauzer and in a way that is not a bad thing, at least she looks like a real dog and not a toy! The boot may have been on the other foot with Elmo otherwise...

Lily was one of three female salt and pepper puppies born to a salt and pepper schnauzer named Ruby.
She lived in the country, and had the range of the house and the yard around the house. She was very timid when first approached and really only came into her own away from her family.
She lived with a human family that included a Mom, Dad and two teenage children, so she is not sure what to do or how to react when she meets a human child. She met our grandson aged four the other day and I am not sure who was more afraid, it was quite funny to watch.
Thanks to Lily's first family, she had a great start to life and they certainly took every care with her.

To say that we had an amazing story of coming up with her name would be a story...it was as simple as sitting in the car on the way home from picking her up and trying out how some names sounded and in truth, I suggested to Tim, "what about Lily?" to which he replied, "I'll think about it," and a little while later, "Lily sounds ok."
And Lily she became.
We added 'Fergil' a little later, as one name did not seem quite enough, especially on those occasions like when our mothers wanted our attention and used our first and middle names to indicate the seriousness of the command.

And... she looks like a 'Lily!'

Don't you think?

Walking in the park

Watching her run and her ears flopping and her limbs all akimbo

Playing ball with her

Playing rough and tumble

Watching Lily play with Elmo

Watching her sleeping when she is lying on her bed upside down with her paws in the air

Bathing her

Taking photos of her and we will get round to taking some movies of her as well

Not long ago, shortly before Christmas on the 10th of December 2010, my husband Tim and I decided that we would get a dog, a puppy. Actually we had been looking on the internet on TradeMe (New Zealand) for a while, oscillating between a schnauzer and a border collie, when we decided to go see some schnauzer puppies out in the country.

Tim had his heart set on a black male puppy, but those that came up on TradeMe were expensive and far away, so in the end we went and looked at some puppies and... came home with a salt and pepper female schnauzer puppy, who sat very timidly on my lap for the drive home.

We talked about names and decided Lily was a nice enough name and so it became hers. Later on we would add another name for when she needed stern focusing and she became Lily Fergil (fur - girl).

She was only 9 weeks old when we got her, born round 23rd September 2010 and weighed about 5.6 kgs. At 3 months she was 9.7kgs and she is not a gross(big) eater, but she sure has grown really well.

When she came into our home, she was incredibly timid and would 'cling' to me as she seemed to bond quite strongly with me on the way home from her first home. She was at that time the same size as our older male cat, an abyssinian called Elmo (Desert Storm - being his official name) aged 13 years and he was very gentle with her in the beginning realizing that she was still an 'infant.' For my feisty cat who knew no or little fear, he kept his claws retracted in their first encounters. Lily was very timid and jumped back quickly from Elmo to begin with, until she found her feet so to speak.

She cried whenever she was in a room by herself (I later found out that this was separation anxiety and that as she grew bigger she would grow out of it) and at night we relented and allowed her to sleep on her bed in our bedroom.
I even asked the question on Facebook "how to do you stop a puppy crying at night," and the kind answer I got was what we had instinctively done anyway. You will do anything for a bit of peace and not to annoy the neighbors!
She now sleeps in the laundry on her bed without a murmur. Through dog obedience training she has learned to sit and stay and she knows when she has stepped over the line.

Tim had had a dog before, I hadn't, but he had not ever had a young puppy and knew little about puppy training. The dog he had previously was about 9 months old when he first got him and they were together for 19 years before he died of either a stroke or brain tumor, the vet was not sure. (...and that is another story...)

So to begin as we meant to go on, my husband approached a dog trainer for obedience training for us, and had an intense 2 hour session with him investing in a dog training manual to continue training our puppy. We have access to a refresher course at any time. The vet also has a puppy play-school if we felt the need for her to go.

The worst things about a new dog, especially a puppy, has got to be the chewing, with the 'peeing everywhere' a close second, and getting her to learn to respond to commands.

With a little perseverance and lots of positive reinforcement she seems to be coming along really well, enough for the vet to comment when she went for her shots how well behaved and quiet she was. I will say this for her, she is not a 'yappy, barky' kind of dog, but she sure loves Elmo!

Whenever she can, she tries to play with him by jumping on him or trying to mouth his tail to the point where now Elmo will hiss and claw at her with his needles fully extended! This does pretty much nothing to Lily as she has a wiry coat and facial whiskers that protect her from harm.
But she just adores him! He is smaller that her and at least she has one 'being' in this household that she can boss over! She is learning though, that Elmo is the leader between them as he will not tolerate any 'crap' from her...!

It is just so funny seeing Lily trying to lick or 'mouth' Elmo or any part of him, usually his tail and Elmo, usually on a chair or couch looking down on her batting her with his paws and hissing and growling at her!

At one point yesterday, Elmo was hissing and growling at her, while Lily was licking the back of his head.
"It must be hard to stay mad with her, when she is licking you, Elmo," laughed my husband.

So many of Lassie's fans want to ask:
Is he allowed on the furniture?

Of course, he is - but then, he's the one who paid for it. ~ Julia Glass

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Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
~ George Eliot, 'Mr Gilfil's Love Story'

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We give dogs time we can spare, space we can spare, and love we can spare.
In return, dogs give us their all.
It's the best deal man has ever made. ~ Margery Facklam, author.

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Dogs look up to you; cats look down on you; pigs treat you as an equal.
~ Winston Churchill

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Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you
later. ~ Mary Bly, Romance Novelist

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Don't accept your dog's admiration as conclusive evidence that you are
wonderful. ~ Ann Landers

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Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a purpose.
~ Garrison Keillor ( who else is going to catch the mice for us?)

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You cannot look at a sleeping cat and feel tense. ~ Jane Pauley

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One more ~

The dog is a yes-animal,
very popular with people who cannot afford to keep
a yes-man.
~ Robertson Davies

I hope that you have enjoyed our little showcase about our new dog - Lily.
I have enjoyed sharing her with you and look forward to watching her grow and develop.
My husband reminded me this evening, that I should take her for a walk tomorrow morning as I haven't been out with her for the last few days.
Perhaps I can be forgiven for that as my left hand is in a cast and I suffered mild concussion this last week after coming off my bike after work some ten days ago.
Anyway, because typing takes so much longer I will keep this relatively short, thanks for stopping by.
Lily says 'bye!'