This week I am featuring my first guest post, written by my sister, Allison. She and her husband (who is also named Chris) dog-sat Zara for us this weekend. Enjoy!
Zara’s human parents (aka my sister and her boyfriend) were attending a wedding in New Jersey. So they dropped her off at my house for the weekend. Zara arrived mid-morning on Saturday and made herself comfortable right away by hanging out on the sofa. She seems to be a pretty adaptable dog. She accepted Chris (my husband) and I as her new keepers and we noticed that she would even bark if one of us left the house.
We were having our air conditioner replaced so the two guys who were replacing it were in and out of the house a lot. At first she was off-leash in the house until one of the guys opened the door and out of know where she bolted out the door and up the street before running back. I tested the “Zara, party!” command and luckily she ran right to me. Phew! I knew my sister would kill me if I lost her puppy baby! After that I used the running leash and attached her to me until the guys finished. It’s a good thing Vizslas like being very close by because she didn’t seem to mind going wherever I went. I took her outside and she met the neighbors’ dogs. The older German Shepard barked at her through his fence and Zara was too intimidated to take up the owner’s invitation to come run around in the yard with him. Our neighbors on the other side have a 6 month old puppy and Zara and the puppy were very interested in playing together, too bad they were both leashed and couldn’t run around together!
In order to avoid a crazy energetic puppy, later in the afternoon I took Zara to Rockburn Park where we hiked in the woods for 3 miles. Zara was pretty good, but she is strong and has the ability to walk or run very fast, and would pull on the leash and look back at me like, “really? You can’t go faster than this?” I know puppies aren’t supposed to run until they are a year old, but being a runner I wished Zara could have joined me on a short run during her visit (I had run 12 miles before Zara arrived on Saturday). I jogged down some of the hills on our hike and Zara didn’t even break into a run, so I’m pretty sure a run for me would just be a fast walk for Zara. The hour of hiking did earn me off and on about 3 hours of sleeping puppy, until about 8:30 pm when Zara started to prowl around the house. She then chased bugs, shadows, and then sat and barked at the dark until I turned the light on in the hallway. Silly puppy!
When it was time to go to bed, Zara’s “Care sheet” (a very detailed listing of all things Zara) said that Zara would lay on the bed until we said “Bedtime” at which she would get up off the bed and go into her crate, which was on the floor in our bedroom. This was not the case! Zara turned limp and kept moving around the bed as to say, “This is where I sleep!” Finally when she fell asleep with her head on my pillow I was able to scoop her up and put her in her crate!
Sunday morning was an early morning with a 5:45am puppy alarm clock! Once we let the princess out of her crate she slept on the bed until I wanted to get up at 8:30am. Then I took Zara to Western Regional Park for a 4 mile walk/hike. It was very hot, so we took some breaks in the shade and even got Kona ice from the Kona ice truck (Zara had hers plain). There were a lot of people around Western Regional for baseball games and multiple people stopped me asking what type of dog Zara is. Most of them hadn’t heard of a vizsla, but told me how pretty Zara is. I agree, but I don’t think it’s going to help her ego!
Zara went home Sunday afternoon, and it was nice to have some quiet back. Chris and I want to get a puppy someday, but for now we are enjoying not having the responsibility–dogs are a lot of work! We also can’t decide on a type of dog. Chris really wants a corgi, however I’d like a dog I can run with and I don’t think a corgi with short little legs is going to be a runner!
