Off With The Cone!

About a week after I picked up Miley, it was time for her ears to be taken down from the cup and put up into "big girl" ears.  Since this was my first time dealing with a cropped puppy out of the cone, I drove down to Salem to my friend Karen's house.  She has a lot of experience in the breed and obviously with cropped dane puppies, and she was kind enough to help me out.  The final product is the pretty funny picture that you see above.  I think she looks pretty stinkin' cute!  Then again, I pretty much always think she looks cute. ;)

Since Salem is so close to Silverton, I decided to combine the taping trip with a little visit to my parents'!  Miley got to meet my mom, dad and sister as well as Jazz, my parents' golden retriever.

Jazz wasn't really sure what to make of the little pipsqueak.  Miley was polite at first, but once she had said her nice hellos, she really just wanted to play.

Since picking her up from her breeder, that was Miley's first big outing.  It involved an hour and a half car ride, getting her big girl ears up, visiting a new house, people and dog, and then another "long" drive home.  She was pretty great for both car rides.  After a couple minutes of crying initially, she settled right in and slept.  And for the drive home she was pretty much out as soon as I put her into the truck.  Ridiculous, ridiculous adorableness!

As I mentioned last week, starting on the 15th, I had Miley entered in the big Rose City Classic dog show for all four days of the all breed competition.  The show itself is a bi of a mad house.  It's great exposure and is usually a major in at least one of the genders each year, but it's also a little bit nuts.  I'm very proud to say that Miley took it all in stride and handled everything like it was no big deal.  She was her normal goofy self outside of the ring and thoroughly enjoyed all the attention that she was getting.  She was unfazed by kids tromping around on the metal bleachers.  She handled the commotion of tons of dogs, tons of people, noise, rain, and one very long day on Saturday like a pro.  I honestly couldn't be prouder of her!  She's also really understanding the difference between how she's expected to behave inside the ring versus outside of the ring.  Everyone has their own individual expectation for their dogs, and obviously I'm not different.  I really want a dog that I can grab from any where, doing anything and immediately take them into the ring and have them unruffled by it. I would love to have that for the performance ring, but that's also a little unfair to the dog.  For the conformation ring, I feel like it's a fairly easy mental switch for them.  And Miley is definitely meeting my "expectations!" (I say expectations loosely because she is a puppy and I don't expect this delineation to occur over night)  She can literally go from being a goof ball, rolling around on her back outside the ring, to all business and getting into the line up.  She also was a super star at holding for the judge's exam all four days!!  We did have one bobble with one judge where I didn't quite understand what he was wanting.  Turns out, he wanted ME to show him the bite and that's what his hand gestures were for.  Miley got a little excited and thought he was encouraging her to come say hello.  Other than, she was great!  She didn't have any competition in her class, so we got the gimmy warm up class.  Then it was on to the winners bitch ring where we got more practice.  Miley is young and she's been going through some awkward growth spurts lately, so I didn't expect her to do anything this show.  I'm just thrilled with how well behaved she was!!  She's a little rock star and I love this puppy to pieces!!

On one of the days, we popped by Bobbie's booth so that Miley could try out the large Dog Tread treadmill.  I'd been really wanting to try it out with one of my dogs so that I can get an idea of how well it can handle the full stride of a great dane.  I am happy to report that the treadmill doesn't disappoint!  It also takes up less room than I expected.  That little gem is now firmly on my want list!  Bobbie had her booth partner snap some pictures of Miley while she was on the treadmill too!

Miley was hesitant at first, but once she got the hang of it she started to relax.  Due to it being her first time and how crazy the venue was, the speed of the treadmill stayed pretty low so the "action" shots of Miley aren't super crazy.  Here's one of them:

The show was exciting, exhausting and fun, but I'm glad that it's over.  It was so great to see everyone that I got to see, to hang out, to talk dogs and to enjoy all things dog show related.  But I was seriously beat by the time we were done showing on Sunday!

I hope everyone is having a good week!