Mischief
I won't lie, the first few weeks with Vincey were tough. I'm pretty sure she thought her name was "NO!" at some point. Have you ever followed around a puppy all night long after work, instructing "NO!" at everything she did? It's exhausting. She turned out great after those first few months and got to the point we'd just let her have free reign of the house when we were gone. But getting to these points were not without some hiccups...
Not a big deal, right, just tore up a piece of paper, why would that conk her out?
Because she was off to the side of this scene, which wouldn't necessarily be a disaster except these were newspapers I had saved from UT's win over USC for the BCS championship game. I guess Little VY was jealous of the attention her namesake got.
See that basket in the picture above? That housed her toys, until the day the basket became the toy itself:
Yes, Vincey liked to destroy things. Toys weren't to be played with. Toys were chewed up, spat out, and left for dead in minutes flat. I learned quickly not to buy anything more expensive than the 99-cent jobbies at Target (except for Nylabones - that things are made of steel - what a find!)
This one isn't michief, but she loved to play chase. She'd come at Sarah or me with the bone in her mouth and chase us until we chased her. And then if we ran from her, she chased us - with the bone in her mouth. I don't think we ever figured out what the game was, except it entailed bones and running. Ahhh, the life of a doggie! (February 22, 2010)
Fortunately she never got this bold when there was a fire going:
She did a fair amount of climbing on things as a puppy. She was just exploring, though. Like the time during the summer of 2007 (she was a few months old) when I took two bratwursts out of the freezer to defrost on the counter. I came out later to put them on the grill and noticed only one brat still on the counter. Vincey's snout gave way to the evidence of the other one. I guess she thought, "Great, Dad, one for you, one for me. I like brat tartare, though, no need to grill mine, thanks!"
I should note that eventually the only thing she climbed on was one couch that we allowed her on. Everything else was off limits and she didn't even try. Except if one of us was in 'her' spot on that couch, she was do a butt wiggle on the floor and bark at us to move over. Princess Puppy she was. She would have to settle for the cushion next to us, though sometimes she got her way:
And when she didn't, she still made out pretty well for herself. (March 10, 2011)
And here's how Little VY came to assume that spot on the couch was hers:
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