At 5 months, zen weighs 48.6 pounds. I need to measure her height but she’s leggy, long backed, and slightly ribby. Overall, she’s doing great! Adolescence has hit and her hearing has gotten selective. She doesn’t always do what we say… and sometimes she gets fearful about new things. But we have been keeping her active and really working on her dog shyness. She made a break thru last weekend and actually started playing with other dogs at her puppy social.

And people? She LOVES everybody.

Zen is 4.5 months which I think is the equivalent of 18 weeks? She finally had a growth spurt and is getting into that famous swissy “leggy” stage.

We did a few “firsts.” Like, go to the beach.

And playing a LOT at the field near our house. But Zen isn’t too interested in running around for more than 10 minutes. She’s more interested in rolling and lounging in the grass.

We’ve been meeting a lot of nice dogs on this field which has been GREAT to build up Zen’s confidence. The puppy socials haven’t been doing too much for her and she tends to just slink around the edges and watch all the action. But when there is only one or two dogs.. she is really interested in socializing. She still acts very submissive with them and the best results are with calm dogs that just want to lay around with her. Here was a nice lab mix who put up with her.

Here a few photos of us just messing around the house. This first one cracks me up because I have no idea what Gavin was trying to do but he was hell bent to crawl under Zen and pretend her body was a bridge. Zen is still mouthy, especially with the kids.. but they’ve gotten pretty good at telling her “off.”

Some more around the house:

Here’s a pic of her standing. She’s really got that great adolescent frame on her now.

And these last two just show how photogenic my girl is. Someday, i’ll get a picture of her smiling. That pose seems to be illusive, but she’s got the intense “look-into-my-eyes-thing” down.