A post about Ayla is LONG overdue. I can’t believe our last post was almost two months ago and that wasn’t even a personal one…but hopefully we’ll do at least a little bit better in the next couple of months. 😉

There’s a few reasons we haven’t been posting much. One is that we’ve been doing a lot of work to build out our farm. One building which was originally horse stalls is being converted into a guest house. We’re trying to do as much of the work as possible ourselves so we’ve been rather tired in the evenings and not up to blogging. But another reason we haven’t blogged much is because Ayla has been so great lately. I’m sure we should have been blogging to praise her but I guess wee were just waiting for the other shoe to drop. But it hasn’t so it seems our little puppy is just growing up to be a perfect dog.

One thing Ayla has managed to do over the last couple of months is destroy a lot more of her stuffies. We lost the big purple & pink dog and the big fuzzie ball (which I may have mentioned already), one Duckie, one Cow, Zebra, her small fuzzie and her big plastic burger. We’re not really sure what brought on this new desire to destroy so many of her toys but we won’t be buying her any new stuffies in the near future. We’re really sad about this because there so many cute ones out there…but if she’s just going to tear them up, we’re not going to fuel the habit.

Yesterday we had a big shopping day for Ayla. We went to Fressnapf to restock on food and treats and we came across some leashes & collars on sale for half-price. We’ve been looking to get new ones for Ayla for a while but just couldn’t stand paying 34 euros for the set when it would be raggedy and frayed after a few weeks time. So we were quite happy about those finds.

We are also planning a trip to Italy for a week in the coming weeks. So a new leash and collar will come in handy. We are also going to start trekking with Ayla and already bought her a really nice backpack from RuffWear. The pack is called Pallisades and not only will she be able to carry her own food, toys and treats now, but the pack also has camel bags so she can carry her own water too.

Last night we took her on her first walk with it. We just had it filled with paper so she could get used to how large it may be. She had little trouble adjusting to having the harness and pack on, although she does try to shake it off every now and then. Keeping her from scratching against walls and almost knocking us over when she walks by will be a larger challenge. In addition to slowly increasing the weight of what she’ll be carrying, we’ll also be working on the distances we go with Ayla every day. We’re hoping to walk several hours every day with her over vacation so we want her to be prepared as well as ourselves.