Internal clock

Brie has a strict internal clock that she like to follow, and she tries her best to enforce it on us. However it doesn't quite align with our schedules. She starts waiting for my husband to come home an hour early every day, and the same goes for her morning bathroom business. She wakes up exactly one hour earlier than we want to get up, and she insists on going to the toilet at that precise moment, even thought she just goes back to bed afterwards.

And it's not that Brie's internal clock ignores daylight savings as it's always set one hour early, so she is consistently one whole hour premature. She need to be reformatted, but we haven't figured out how to achieve that yet. She is like one of those annoying person who set the clock 5 minutes forward, and then claim that other people don't run on time.

What does Brie dream about?

When Brie is sleeping she often has exciting dreams. We can tell, because she unknowingly acts out parts of her dream in real life. Yesterday she must have found a tasty bone in her dream, because she was making munching motions and sounds, while wagging her tail. It must have been a very good dream!

And at other times she wiggles her nose when she has found something smelly, or moves her ears around. But the worse one is when she sleep barks. I guess she must have seen the mailman in her dream.

Holiday plans

We are planning a little trip down to Christchurch to visit some family, and Brie is also joining as on our holiday, as they have little doggies for Brie to meet and also fields for her to run around and stretch her little legs in.

Well everyday is a holiday day for Brie, but this one is special as it will be first time for Brie will be traveling by airplane. She doesn't know what "pet class" is, and she thinks she is travelling first class; planning to eat gourmet cheese from the cheese board and sipping some wine. But I'm sure she will be fine because she likes her crate, since she made it smell like lamb chops and it keeps her entertained for hours. Oh and it is temperature controlled too so you're not going to get cold. But you don't need to pack yet, it's not for weeks.

Grassy poodle

The day after the mowing gets done is Brie's favourite. She investigates every inch of her lawn, and this is a huge task for a little poodle, so she gets really into it. She loves digging up new scents, and then rolling around in them. For us this means more bits of grass left around the house than usual, and naturally Brie just gets grassy. So I guess someone has to wash Brie, I hope the post-it will help.

Toy box

As Brie got older, her stash of toys accumulated. We used to just throw everything into her house where she could nest among her toys. But it got to the point where Brie couldn't even fit into her own house. So we bought a couple boxes for her to store her things.

However, Brie has discovered a new game, which she likes to call 'lets empty out all the toys onto the floor'. It usually begins because she just must have that toy that's right at the bottom, but there are all these other toys in the way.

But it continues, as once she has the toy she has worked so hard to get she then decides that it wasn't the one that she really wanted. So at the end of the night we have one triumphant poodle playing with dozens of toys scattered around the lounge.

Want out

Brie has discovered a new way of letting us know when she wants to go outside - scratching the wall next to the door with her paw. It's so sweet when she scratches then looks up to see if anybody noticed, and I feel like we are communicating so well together.

So when I let her out to do her business she usually initiates her toileting routine (Brie has a routine for everything) but is then immediately distracted by something; a neighbour, or a falling apple, or sometimes nothing in particular, but it all needs investigating. So off she goes charging around in the wet grass completely forgeting why she wanted to go out in the first place. And after a few minutes of mayhem she will come back inside, soaking wet and looking very proud of herself.

But then, a few minutes later, after she has been dried, a quiet scratching sound can be heard coming from the near the front door.. You better be going this time Brie.

In the begining

Back when Brie was a tiny puppy she wasn't able to cause as much havoc as she would have liked. This was mostly because she hadn't quite got the hang of running around while waving a toy around like crazy. But she had also yet to develop her keen sense of mischief. So instead of bounding around off the deck and into the long grass like she does now she would sort of tumble down the tiny step and land upside on the lawn. This was usually followed by some frantic squirming to get back on her feet, followed by a cautious glace around to see if anybody noticed. I'm not sure she realised how cute she was back in her youth.