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.