Add a new camera to a new dog and what do you get? A gazillion pictures, a few of which are in focus.

The challenge is capturing a very active young dog, often wet and dripping in the swimming season. Here are a few more or less successful attempts…

Yes, Ducky is indeed wet from head to toe. She loves dunking her head in the water, even all the way under the water.

The wet head combined with a wild, happy run look like a dog gone mad here. Or maybe more like a wet cat, actually.

And here’s one just to show how dignified, yes even pensive, Ducky can look. Bet there was a goody getting her attention.

OK, OK, it’s not until tomorrow, but since everything else here has been posted late I figured that it would be alright to start the birthday celebration early.

It’s hard to believe that the little bundle of chubby puppy is turning 1 year old! She has grown into her almost full size, but still has a bit of her puppy-like expression. Some  highlights of the wonderful months that she’s been around…

Here she is just a couple weeks ago, posing while I test out my new camera (consider that a warning – I even signed up for a dog photography course one weekend next fall )…

Just a month ago we were all romping around in huge piles of mountain snow…

And there was the fantastic boat trip in Bourgogne last fall, complete with canine captains…

Don’t you just want to hug her?

She was 6 months old on that trip. Already she’s become more “adult” in several ways. She picks her playmates in the woods more selectively, rather than trying to get every single dog to play with her.  And she does fine being left alone for a few hours (on that boat trip she made a lot of noise just when the two of us got off the boat to hold the ropes while we were in a lock).

She still loooves to play, and then she poops out at home again…

We call this her “sleep like an Egyptian” position (Remember the song “Walk like an Egyptian”?) She makes the most amusing grunting sounds while she sleeps, sometimes quite melodious. We think they sound like satisfaction and contentment, though the timing sometimes makes it sound like she’s questioning whatever we were saying just then.

Of course she’s not yet an adult and does have those adolescent moments when she turns on her selective deafness – it’s a teenager thing and doesn’t last long. She’s a wonderfully good dog, who is friendly and polite with two- and four-leggeds alike. Our day-to-day lives changed when Ducky came, and we wouldn’t have it any other way! Happy birthday Ducky!

The end of year holidays are winding down. Now is  usually the time to gather with friends and family, but Ducky already had a family reunion in the middle of the summer. Only now did we get around to posting photos from Ducky’s meeting with Ducky’s mom Djamba and Djamba’s mom and Caro and Caro’s friends. Needless to say, it was very exciting for the 4-leggeds and the 2-leggeds alike!

After a short walk in the woods nearby – a long walk then for little 4 month old Ducky, wow time has flown! – we came home for a visit and a snack. We love looking at the pics from “way back then”, and hope we’ll have a chance for another “family reunion” again soon. Actually, Ducky met her brother Branco at puppy school in September, a really exciting time for them both. They ran like crazy together during play time (the best part of puppy school according to Ducky . Unfortunately we have no pics from that get together, too much going on at puppy school to take photos.

Here are a few souvenirs from the summer reunion with Djamba and co. Picking these out made us realize how many photos there are to share. More to come!

Djamba, Caro and Ducky

Ducky and Djamba resting in the shade

Walking home alongside Djamba after a romp in the woods

Mmmmmm, Ducky’s favorite kind of gift, yum!

Ducky’s rabbit feet fly as she encourages Djamba to play

That smile must run in the family. It’s contageous, that’s for sure!

Wow, you go out to walk the dog and all of a sudden a few months fly by! We’ve got lots of pics and more videos to share. For now, this is Ducky’s latest achievement: giving paw, and getting shot down with a bang! 

Other “news” that we’ll be catching up on soon: a summer reunion with Ducky’s mom and friends, Ducky picks up doggie bling, hide and seek with yummy goodies and other fun canine adventures.

Uh oh, long time no update. Well, that’s how it goes, I guess. We have tons of pics and even a few videos, but the time just flies. And the time spent walking the little ducky dog, is well, a lot of wonderful time.

It’s already well into fall, but there’s a at least one summer scene that needs to be shown. We were lucky enough to be able to be in the mountains over the firecracker holiday weekend, where Ducky can enjoy the lake.

She enjoys doing post-lake acrobatics too, especially the frog dog stretch and slide:

Munch a little grass, do a little somersault:

We’ve all been busy lately, among other things with… puppy play time! It’s actually puppy school, where Ducky gets to learn stuff (and have recess to run wild once in a while) with other fun pups. Here’s a few pictures starring our little fuzzy-headed pup on July 10.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell her apart from her pal Eiela, a purebred Flatcoated Retriever. Ducky distinguished herself on this particular day, though – she was the one who was completely soaking wet…

Taking a break at puppy play time

Ducky's the one on the right, the wet one.

Oozing cuteness, that's what Ducky does best.

Thanks to Hundeschule Mitch for the photos.

A couple weekends ago we went to the mountains, Ducky’s first time up high (around 2000 meters). It was a huge relief from the hot days we’d been having, and we all had a fantastic time. Thank goodness L & E asked us before we had the puppy – if we’d needed to decide after her arrival we probably would have thought it would be too complicated. But it went really well, trains, gondola rides, goats and all.

One of many fun moments was this exploration of some leftover snow (right after getting all wet in the Bettmersee). Finding snow was a special bonus, normally she would have had to wait months before playing with snow down here at home. With our new little Flip Video it was easy and fun to record too. (That’s me in the shadow there, almost falling off once, and that’s M supervising from dry ground. )

Who’s the cutest dog in the world? The right answer for every dog owner in the world is, of course, “my dog!”. And here she is, Ducky, the cutest dog in the world, just after she’d performed a perfect “out”. Guess which room she was supposed to be “out” of?

Trish King’s Parenting Your Dog was the first book we bought in preparation for having a dog. We love to read and “Parenting Your Dog” is a pleasant tale (pun intended) of the parallels between raising kids and raising canines. And it’s packed with sage advice.

Like the wonderful “stupid mom routine”. Trish King describes how you can deal with behavior problems in a wonderfully positive and creative way: you intentionally misinterpret unwanted behavior, reacting in a way that your dog thinks is really stupid, which results in your dog stopping the behavior.

Sounds good, right? Well this one really works and we have the proof: she’s quietly sleeping outside the office door.

Today I was playing with Ducky, then after a little while we moved on to a calmer toy, one that she could play with alone (ha! I thought so anyway). And I went into the office, which is off limits and blocked by a child gate. Ducky decided that was not to her liking and sat on the other side of the gate and barked. Loudly. Demanding. Ouch.

So I decided to try out the stupid mom routine. When she barked a second time, I cheerfully asked, oh Ducky, you want to go out? Then I put on her leash, came with her to the door, and let her out. That is, I let her out for 5 seconds, alone, with the leash still on my side of the door. Then I let her right back in and acted normal again. I brought her the ropey toy and went back into the office. All very cheerfully.

She came and sat at the office door and barked again: “Hey! Two-legged dummy! Play with me!”. Time for take 2 of the stupid mom routine. We went to the door, she went out, I stayed in with the other end of the leash, and 5 seconds later I invited her back in. Ducky didn’t take long to decide how stupid I was. This time she wasn’t interested in another toy, she just gave up on her stupid mom and plopped down on the floor away from the office door.

Thank you Trish King, you’re a genius.

It’s hot today so we all went to the beach. For us that means a little trip to the Aare, a river that runs through town and offers wonderful swimming for humans and dogs alike.

Ducky tried out her swimming paws for the first time. She loved running through the shallow water, and ended up swimming quite by surprise after running off a rock slab that went into slightly deeper water. She’s still deciding whether or not that was OK, but she’ll have plenty of chances to dip in again. Summer has only just begun. And with about 3/4 Labrador genes the odds are high that she’ll live up to her name.

Ducky with her new found friend, the owner of Gray: