welcome home, baby Teal

Last Saturday our friend Ben brought home his new puppy, Teal, from Ignited in Chicago. Teal is a cousin to Ezri, Indigo, and Rua through their shared grandmother Brita, as outlined in the genealogy post that I made a few months ago. Her full name is likely to be "Ignited's Passed With Flying Colors" or something along those lines, whatever Ben settles on when the papers come for registration. Of course, with a new BC puppy in the area, I needed to meet her as soon as possible, so Ben brought her over on Sunday morning to meet Ezri and Curzon. I kept Jadzia and Phoebe gated in the back so as not to overwhelm the new pup with too many crazy dogs at one time!

The introduction between Teal and Ezri went very well, with Teal quickly shifting into "annoying puppy" mode and giving Ezri a taste of the medicine she's been giving Curzon for the last four months.


This was clearly an invitation to play, so Ezri proceeded to wrestle and squish Teal for the next ten minutes.


Teal soon retaliated for the squishing with a POUNCE, which I miraculously captured perfectly with a well-timed shot:


Soon after this, we let Curzon join the fray, and he and Ezri quickly began tugging together. Little Teal found this fascinating, and tried repeatedly to join in on one of the loose ends. She was suprisingly successful, although since she's so little she was just dragged around as the other two fought. I have video of this and will put it up on Youtube when I get home today. By the end of the afternoon, Ezri was a little tired and was happy to look pretty for a picture!


Sunday evening was Teal's first exposure to flyball, and Ben and I played with her on a single puppy jump as her first "lesson" in between being cuddled by the rest of the team members. Chris took some photos, and this is the best one!


Tuesday afternoon Ben asked if he could bring the puppy over for some more playtime, to which I happily agreed as a nice diversion from the cold of the unheated house. So Chris woke up to find a puppy in the house, which is always good when the puppy is willing to be snuggled.


After some half-hearted playtime since Ezri was more interested in toys than her cousin, we took Teal down to meet the cats. While Sharon and Mike at Ignited do have cats, I don't think they really interact much with the litters, probably for their own sanity. Obsidian quickly did his patented "I rule you, puppy" smack several times, earning the puppy's wariness perfectly - if only Phoebe would learn the same lesson! Onyx didn't smack the puppy, but did definitely confuse her a bit by stropping up against her, causing Teal to freeze confusedly much as Curzon does to this day.


I thought I had taken some video of Teal interacting with the cats, but I think it was lost when my card popped a read error during the recording. I think I need a new camera, this one is about four years old now and is increasingly annoying with things like flash battery life, card read errors, and spots on the photos (although the latter is fixable). However, I will end with a photo of Obsidian that shows off his still-shorn leg from his stint in the emergency room - it's amazing how skinny kitty legs are under all that fuzz!