Celebrating Hooper's 1st Birthday!

Last Friday we celebrated our Labrador Hooper's 1st birthday! I can't quite believe our little fury boy is a year old already, it has flown by! We spent the day spoiling him with presents, which included lots of yummy dog treats (anyone who has ever owned a Labrador will know how much they LOVE their food!), he also got a new ball and a soft toy fox (he loves both but I'm not sure how long 'Foxy' will last!). Hooper also got to enjoy a special dog friendly birthday cake.......which he loved!

I spent the day reminiscing about how tiny he had been when we first brought him home 10 months ago, and how much our lives and home have changed since he arrived. We have bald patches of carpet, a lawn covered in holes, we're constantly cleaning dirt marks on the walls, and no amount of hoovering in the world seems get rid of all the dog hair during malting seasons! We get less space on the sofa, and if you dare to get up to pop to the toilet or make a cup of tea it's almost guaranteed you'll walk back in and find he's stolen your seat! I don't mind admitting he was very hard work as a puppy and there were times right at the beginning where I wondered if we had done the right thing. We most definitely had! Although he still has his naughty days, and we have plenty of training still to work on, he is turning in to the most sweet, gentle, rather daft, wonderful dog. He's so much more than a dog to us, he's our family, our boy, and we couldn't imagine our home or life with out him.

He's grown in to such a handsome boy now but look how tiny and cute he was last summer. I certainly couldn't pick him up in my arms these days!

I love this boy with all my heart and I feel so lucky to have him, he really is my super Hooper!

Tanya x

Welcoming Hooper!

Exactly one month ago today we (Karl & I) welcomed a new little addition to our household. We collected our eight week old Labrador puppy which we have named Hooper. We have wanted and planned for a puppy for years and a year after moving in to our house, the time was right. We had settled on what breed and sex we wanted and were going to visit puppies once we had returned from our trip to Norfolk. It all happened much faster than we expected though. After a couple of calls and chats to get all the information we were happy with we ended up visiting a litter of Lab puppies the afternoon we returned from Norfolk. We totally fell in love, and four days later we were collecting our boy Hooper!
Those four days in between were spent trying to puppy proof the house (as best you can), registering with a vet and booking an appointment for his first lot of vaccinations, and buying the mountain of bits and bobs needed.....amounting to a small fortune!!!

A month on and this little puppy has not only grown in size but in personality too. He's funny, lovable, cheeky and rather naughty at times. He's done really well learning quite a number of commands so far, including sit, stay, down, paw and come......well, he seems to have selective hearing when it comes to that last one! Like most Labrador puppies he loves to chew and various parts of our house have fallen victim to this including a certain part of the skirting boards, a patch of carpet, the doormat and the dining chair legs! I should mention that we have also been through numerous soft dog toys that have been shredded by his sharp little puppy teeth. The shortest lifespan of one of his soft toys was less than 24 hours! He is now fully house trained with no accidents indoors for nearly two weeks now and he's also fantastic at going to bed at night in his crate and sleeping through the night!

He's extremely exhausting, it's like having a very destructive toddler in the house. Needles to say it's been quite hard getting much creative work done over the last month! I would change it for the world though, I can't imagine our home without our boy now.

Next week we begin our puppy training classes, which I'm really looking forward too. It will be great to get him socialised with other pups and for us to pick up some professional advice on the training. I do hope Hooper isn't the naughtiest pup in the class.....it wouldn't surprise me!
Hooper has completed our household and made us a little family of three. We're going to love watching him grow in to a big handsome Labrador and friend, and we can't wait for all the adventures we are going to have together. We absolutely love our boy Hooper.

Tanya x

P.S. If any of you have experience of raising/training Labradors, please do leave me some tips! Thanks!