Duke's first road trip

We took Duke for a long road trip last week.
Chennai-Bangalore-Mysore (Stopover for the night) - Madikeri - Sullya - Puttur - Mangalore and back after a week holiday
Duke managed the journey really well. We kept food and water for him. We stopped every 5hours for him to empty his bladder. He even pooped when he needed to so we didn't have to wait around for him. Labradors are truly easy travel companions.

He had a fun time in Mangalore. 

The beach on the westcoast is slightly different than the eastcoast. It was also very quiet and clean. 

This is Duke at the beach, the happiness on his face :)

We went to a farm in Manipal and Duke had his first encounter with a sheep and a couple of goats. 

Milestones.

Our Duke is now 5 months plus. He has grown more in height and length but still acts like a puppy.
He has reached a few doggie milestones eg:

1. His first swim in the lake last Sunday.
We went to this resort called The Farm, which is on the Old Mahabalipuram Road in Chennai. It has all farm animals (cows, chicken, turkey) and even horses. There was a lake within the compound and Duke being a true Labrador jumped right in with no hesitation. It was a proud daddy-mummy moment for us watching him swim for the first time. We even have the video on YouTube.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSeopMxoF2I Kindly click on this link to watch it. :)
Today when we went to the beach on our regular Sunday morning trip, he jumped right into the ocean and paddled. It is a double bonus for us as we are water lovers too and beach bums.

2. All his baby teeth have fallen off.
He has a month of baby teeth falling off that used to give me quite a scare seeing blood on his bone. We collected some of them. I will add the picture here once i have uploaded it. He has a full set of adult teeth now and the nibbling has come down a little although when he is excited he can't be stopped.

3. He sleeps through the night and even lets us sleep in till 6.30am. ( He used to wake us up exactly at 5am to go to the toilet.

This is roughly the update on Duke for now. He is due for his next photo shoot with Tailshots.in. so we will post more pictures after that.
For now, hope you enjoyed the video of Duke and his swim as much as we did. :)

Memorable last week of April

Last week was a great one. Our main highlight was our first Petcialize event. It is a meet of all dog lovers and their pets. It was held at someone's house this time, outdoor garden. We were a little nervous because till now Duke has only shown over enthusiasm when he meets other dogs during his walks.
Nevertheless, our puppy made us so proud. He was, as expected. very excited to see so many dogs around. But he was a good puppy considering he was the youngest there. He approached other older dogs well, walked away when they seemed hostile, made some friends. There was a cute 3 and half month old beagle who bonded so well with Duke. They found an ideal playmate in one another and were inseparable. We have a video that I will upload in a few days. And our 3 month old puppy did not pee or poop the whole time until we left and reached the main road near our car. Such proud parents we were on Sunday. He dozed off the whole drive back home, a happy puppy.
Moments like this make us feel relieved that we are treating him well. The both of us work so he is left alone for hours the whole day except for when our domestic help comes to feed him his lunch and let him relieve himself in the toilet. We have made sure we spend the most time with him when we are not at work and to mentally and physically stimulate him during that time which includes 2 walks a day, playing fetch, hugging time while he chews on his toys, training him and feeding him. We are glad we are on the right track in giving the best. This is the picture of him taken by a professional pet photographer who is really good by the way. Eshita Prasanna. Anyone interested may contact me and i will give you her details. She is based in Chennai.

Lesson for mummy today.

This morning, Duke kept me awake from 4am. This was the second day. In a row. As you can guess, my patience was wearing thin. I tried distracting him with his bone to catch another hour's sleep but he was more interested in our bathroom door and when I dozed off for half an hour, I found the broom in the balcony, well, de-feathered. I thought the morning walk would help him release whatever stress he was having or at least tire him out. No such thing happened.
We read about ways to stop him from pulling on the leash that included stopping everytime he pulled. The outcome? Our 15 minutes walk was dragged on to 1 hour. When we came home, he started getting really interested in our couch thinking it was the beach and started digging it. My patience was non-existent by then. The morning did not end well.

One important thing I have learnt the past one month is that dogs can sense your mood without you showing it so outwardly. Which means, I can't fake being nice to Duke. He can tell when i'm pissed at him. But what makes dogs such special creations of God is that, they always, even if it shows otherwise, want to please us. So, when we are angry at them, it upsets them but it is a vicious cycle. They become more stressed and tend to be more destructive then. And we misunderstand them as being naughty and disobedient.
I went to work feeling exhausted but I came home, having cooled down, a more stable person as Duke makes me a little bit better a person everyday.

Goodnight everyone from Duke. Mummy's hoping for a good night's sleep. 

Other than puppy training...

I sat for my MRCS exams this week. So that is one item on the list checked off. *pat on the back*
I have started a hobby. That is training, walking and spending time with Duke. *another pat on the back*
I shall continue updating this part of the year too.
For now, I will take my Duke for a walk.
Ah yes, that is our daily exercise too. :)

Duke, our lab puppy.

It has been a long time since I last blogged. Another milestone in our lives have begun.
We got our Labrador puppy on the 3rd of March. We named him Duke.
And so as all good stories go, our lives were never the same.
He is now 12 weeks old and so much has happened. I never knew how small things could make me happy, like his first steps down the stairs, or him holding his bladder so he doesn't mess up his crate, or the first time he did not nip my face but licked it instead. So, henceforth, I shall catch up with his last 1 month with us...

He was a mere 35 days old when we got him, which according to what we read online is way too young to be separated from his mother.

This is Duke having his first bowl of water in our home.

This is Duke's flu face, he was having a flu for the first few days here. Thankfully he got well fast after one trip to the vet. By the way, his trips to the vet for vaccinations went well. He did not make a fuss with the injections but he did pee on the chair while waiting to go home. Note to self : Empty bladder before going to the vet.

As we live in an apartment, we decided to make the guest toilet as his 'home' toilet and to slowly train him to hold it in till we take him for a walk which is at 6am before we go to work and at 6pm.

Duke toilet training. Surprisingly, he took on it pretty well. He automatically 'did his business' during his first walk

He needed a little (a lot!) of guidance to go to the toilet during the hours in between though. We read online that we should not scold him or punish him when he does it elsewhere in the house. We kept that in mind, and took turns with holding our temper and cleaning up the mess.

 When you see this face, all the sleepless nights, and cleaning up (3 rugs everyday for first 5 days!) was all worth it.

On the road to full control of my thoughts

I'd like to share a thought on something I read yesterday.
You are what you think.
Act happy and you will be happy. Your thoughts will determine how the day enfolds. I like this. I even tried it today.
I have a bad habit of looking forward to a holiday and when the day starts, I will watch the time, calculating how much left till it is tomorrow. This is not because I am waiting to go to work. It is my bad habit of looking out for something bad. I wake up and I scan in my head, what all that I should worry about. It is as if I anticipate that there is always something to worry about. So, it spoils my day before it even begins. A vicious cycle.
The good thing is, I've realised my mistake. Now, just for me to do something about it. 

Not-so-good days

After a long weekend of conference, i am back. Embarassingly I have to evaluate myself and I have slackened.
1. No exercise - although i did walk around a LOT and we climbed the hill during sightseeing last weekend
2. No bottle of water accompanying me everyday
3. No studying going on for MRCS
4. No new hobby

As the Chinese say, "Fall 6 times and get up 7 times"
So I shall get back in the groove again. Truthfully, I almost abandoned this blog too. Why is it that it is so easy to do the wrong thing? To quit, to get angry, to think badly of people, to bitch, to do what you said you will not do.

Anyway, I shall be back tomorrow, hopefully a little better than today.

Power of the mind

You may start your day determined to make it productive. But you end up having a useless boring day. This is how much everyone and everything around can influence us. What weak minds we have. At the end of the day, who loses out? Not the guy at who honked you on the way to work, he has forgotten that split second that initiated a chain reaction of moments-that-screwed-up-my-day. 

Have you thought of how the day could have turned out if you just reacted differently? Or instead of sleeping an extra 15 minutes, you woke up on time? Do you remember that extra 15 minutes and if you do, does it feel worth it now? How many days have we lost in just screwing it up ourselves? 

A little more insensitivity (so we do not get irritated or offended so easily) and selective memory (so we immediately forget the negative emotion) will help us to enjoy our days more. Just my opinion. 

An episode of blah-ness

The easy part of the resolution is over. The first day.
I am still drinking water regularly. I am studying consistently. I still have no hobby. And I didn't go for a jog today.
Today, I feel blah. Blah should be made a word. With no true definition because we all know what blah refers to.
Here's to hoping for a less-blah day tomorrow.

A little progress today

First things first. Yesterday, I thought long and hard about hobbies. I searched the internet i.e. "best hobbies for doctors" etc. This is my shortlist

1. Knitting - it will improve my dextrity and surgical skills. There was this really good YouTube video on it. My mom-in-law is also due for a visit soon so I can always learn it from here. Plus, there is a "thread shop" just around the corner for me to get supplies. This is high on the list for now. 

2. Cooking - I do like cooking and it gets my chores done of feeding myself and the husband. However it involves searching for new ingredients (more time and money spent). If I use whatever I have, i end up with the same recipes, obviously. And I am already interested in cooking. It won't be that much change for me. 

3. Gardening - Who am I kidding?

I have a project for this month. There's an empty wall in the house that we want to do a collage of photo frames on. I'm quite excited about it. 

Today, I brought the bottle of water to the hospital, drank 3/4 of it and stupidly forgot to get it home. 

I came home early (5pm) as it is not my duty today, and went for a jog for 15 mins. Achievement! 

And I am here, blogging. 

Oh and I studied after lunch, for about an hour. Most of the days I just doze off after lunch in the library. 

I would say, a nice day well spent. 

Thought of the day -

One of the most bugging and nagging thing for a married couple is money. When I was single, I shopped whenever i felt angry, pissed off, moody, sad and happy, which is everyday few days. Spending 300 rupees for dinner was not a big deal. I didn't think twice about going for a coffee with a friend. But now, all expenses are double the amount even though the salary is also double (him+me) but I still stinge. Now, saving up is a big deal, and so is buying a house or car. However, my point of this paragraph is, taking care of our finances is a real challenge for a couple but at the end of the day, the month and the year, I feel we have matured a little bit more as a couple.