A Whole New World

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(This post was written through Gunner's eyes by Cheri Conway, founder of Thornwood Labradors)

I can see better and better every day, and it's really NEAT! Today something REALLY weird happened. I heard a sound. See, remember that I told you that I couldn't hear? I just thought that was the way of things, and nobody could hear. I was wrong! Nothing scares me, because it's so safe here, and everything is always the same routine.... but now there's so much more to know about. The lady noticed, too. She said I was about three weeks old, and that was right on time. She said now she can make 'kissy' noises at us when she takes our pictures, and get us to look at her. Seems to work, all right. One other interesting thing happened: the lady said that we were big enough now that if we fell into the water dish, we could get back out of it, so she gave us our own dish of water, and our own dish of food! She aimed our heads at the food, and WOW! All of us crammed in to munch on it. We just LOVED it!!

After that, I munched a little here and there all day, but mostly I played in the food, and slept in it. That round bowl was JUST right for curling up for a nap. Every time the lady came past, she'd scoop me up and take me out of the food dish. She said I was hogging it, and if I slept in it, no one else could eat. I didn't really care, and kept going back for naps there.

Today one of my littermates grabbed me by the ear, and really CHOMPED it! I don't know why he did that, and he said HE didn't know, either, but it sure did hurt! I screamed really loud. My mommy didn't even look up. See, usually if anything made me yell, mommy and the lady would come running to help me, but this time, when my brother chomped my ear, nobody came. It started to happen all the time now. All of us would chomp onto someone else's ear, or tail, and just drag them around, screaming bloody murder. Why didn't anyone come HELP us?? I heard the lady tell someone that it was Nature giving a Life Lesson. I didn't understand, but I know I didn't think that Nature was being very nice this time. Well, a couple of days of that I just turned around when my brother chomped my tail one afternoon and... I CHOMPED HIM RIGHT BACK! He let go. I tried that each time someone chomped me, and it always seemed to work. Everybody else was figuring out how to stop the pain, too. These days, there's still tons of play, but not nearly so much screaming. The lady said the lesson was learned, but that there were plenty more to come. Guess my mommy knew that, too, because she never stepped in to break us up, although she's be there in a heartbeat for any OTHER reason.

We play with toys now. The lady gives them to us, and we have LOTS of fun. Mostly, though, we still sleep and eat and sleep and eat and sleep and eat. We are all about five times as big as when we were born. The lady says I'm SIX times as big! I'm still smaller than the rest, but she says I'm really catching up. My puppy-doctor came today for some other reason, and the lady had him listen to my heart and really have a good look at me, because I'd been so small when I was born. He said I was perfect, and my heart sounded just fine! The lady was so happy, and gave me extra kisses. She said that there was this really neat family, The Schultz Family, that wanted me, and they didn't mind if I'd had to work extra hard to catch up. She told me that their names were Chip, Tracy, Taylor, Aubrey, Hannah, and Jackson. She said that they had been working and saving and hoping for me for a LONG time, and that I was going to be the special one chosen to be their best friend. I'm not sure what I need to learn to do that, but it sounds like a good thing, and I'm going to try REALLY hard to do it right. The lady said that they would call me 'Gunner', and now SHE calls me that, too. The thing is, that ALL of us think that our name is 'Gunner' now!