Maggie's First Christmas

We have a lot to blog about, so we'll cover Christmas Day here and other stuff in the next post.

Little Mag's had a pretty good first Christmas. Santa and her grandparents made sure she was completely spoiled.

Here's Maggie looking at her loot, with Mr. Stinky looking on (Stinky has no idea that this isn't going to be a good day for him...)


Her grandma & grandpa sent her a new collar and some yummy treats from Florida. Her grandma Lela got her some Bully Sticks and a new ornament.


Here's Maggie with her gifts from Santa - a new Kong, a new winter collar/leash, and a new toy - now dubbed Lambchop. We'll get to Lambchop in the next post.


Later, after opening gifts, we hosted Christmas day. We had about 25 guests over, which is about double the number Maggie has ever seen in our house. She handled it all well - staying put in her little den in the corner.

She had some cuddly company in Finnegan - the new puppy Kat's cousins Tim & Sue picked up that morning. Finnegan was adorable and possibly slept more than Maggie did that day - and he took care of his business outside all day without a single accident. For the most part they didn't really interact much with each other - besides trying to eat each other's food. Finnegan is probably looking for livelier company and Mags was more or less indifferent which is kind of her default mood.


Kat & I exchanged ornaments - and Maggie just happened to get each of us an ornament too. You'll notice there was somewhat of a theme in this year's gifts.

So when Kat brought home a new stuffed animal as one of Maggie's Christmas gifts, I'll admit that I was skeptical. We all know Maggie doesn't play with toys. Sure she's chewed on Stinky a couple of times but her interest quickly waned and for the most part he is ignored. So why get another toy to just sit around, right?

Well, it turns out, for whatever reason, Maggie loves Lambchop. Stinky is now a second class citizen (he's out of sight in her toy box now). Maybe it's because Stinky showed up on her first day and she didn't realize he was hers (maybe Stinky was here first and she was his?). Maybe he just doesn't taste as good, who knows.

Maggie took to Lambchop right away, chewing on her, tearing up the strings tied to her, and curling up with her. This lead to a new discovery...

While playing around with Lambchop to try to entice Maggie to play, she starting grabbing the strings or an arm or an ear and pulling on Lambchop while we held on to other parts of her. Maggie had never done this before.

After a while of this we remembered that she's had a tug toy in her toy box since the day we got her, but she had never shown any interest in it. It took some prodding, but Maggie eventually figured it out and started playing with us - nearly 11 months after we found her. She's pretty timid about it, especially to start, but at times she can pull pretty hard. We make sure she always wins which seems to build up her confidence as the game goes on. Of course, this is all in bed and she doesn't bother to even sit up to play. But it's another huge breakthrough for her.

She'll eventually work herself up after a few minutes where she's "laughing" and seems to be having fun trying to grab the toy as we spin it around her head. So we spend a few minutes every day playing - she sometimes loses interest pretty quickly. She's getting better at it and she's played probably nearly a dozen times now. Today she even grabbed the end of it as soon as I brought it out without requiring the usual five minutes of ramp up time it usually takes her to start.

So, Stinky is relegated to the toy box for a while now. We're hoping in a couple of months we can bring him out and he'll be a new and fascinating toy for her, but we'll see.

We got a bunch of snow on Friday and Saturay, so Maggie's back to wondering where she can go to the bathroom. We easily have a foot of snow out there now, with another 1-2" inches on the way Monday and another "significant snow event" Wednesday... then the HIGH is supposed to be like -2 on Thursday, so it's not going anywhere anytime soon. Here are a few shots of Mags and I from Friday and Saturday. Sometimes Maggie doesn't realize she can shake and get the snow off of her, so we couldn't resist getting this shot of the abominable snow pup before toweling her off Friday.