I haven’t been very good at updating the blog lately. Chalk it up to the loss of my mom and then a very busy schedule with work. But Zen has been steadily growing into the big girl she will eventually become. In a couple of weeks she’ll be 8 months old. We haven’t weighed her in awhile but my guess is that it is somewhere between 55-60 pounds. At the shoulder she stands 24 inches. Height standard for girl dogs is 23.5-27 inches so she is right on target. She’s skinny as she should be at this age, and very leggy.. but I definitely see more substance of bone starting to develop which is kind of neat. Maybe people will stop asking me if she’s a Great Dane mix now…

She graduated her second puppy class a couple of weeks ago but came down with kennel cough the same week so we weren’t actually able to go to graduation. Since then, we’ve been slacking in terms of her training and the Swissy willfulness has definitely raised it’s head because of it. She doesn’t always listen very well, and sometimes is downright rude in how she defies us. (I’ll do a more in depth post about her training later.) But mostly, she’s just a sweet cuddle bunny who is quite happy to sleep most of the day as long as she’s near you.

We’ve been hiking in our back woods alot. I made this little video this week just to show how big she’s getting.

Mainly we are getting ready for Christmas. We decided to put the tree in the back room this year… just so Zen isn’t tempted to eat the ornaments. So far she’s doing ok with it. Santa is even bringing her a present for her stocking. She’s getting a BIG GIRL collar…