Depth of the Rabbit Hole

As I peer down the rabbit hole that is my impending adventure, I can't help but get excited for adding a Vizsla to my life. The new year will be marked with the arrival of Bouncing Fireball, aka Bounce. I am hoping for an inquisitive fuzzball with a keen desire to interact with its environment. Bounce will be trained as a hunting dog, which will be a rewarding experience for us both; giving both of us the sense of purpose,boundaries, and intellectual stimulation necessary for us to lead happy, low-stress lives. We will focus on hunt tests and field trials to start, although I have been recently enamored with well rounded dogs of the utility tests.

The month of December is chocked-full of preparations. While Bounce will not be my first dog, she will be my first puppy and my first bird dog. I have been designing puppy town, a lavished area of tiled floor with plenty of play space and convenient outdoor access, for the torturous house breaking. I have a lists of vets, and have been slowly weeding through them based upon the positive and negative experiences of friends, along with my own personal veterinary peeves. I have been reading everything I can on mouthing, basic obedience, nutrition, immunization, introduction to birds, crate training, and am attempting to make some informed choices ahead of time before I sink into a world of overwhelmed chaos, which I know will be unavoidable, until Bounce and I learn to work together.

So here, I stand at the rim of the rabbit hole, ready to take the plunge. Bounce, here we go...