Koschei

This last week we were taking care of my sister's baby while she went to New York. No, not a child, her dog. Koschei is definitely very much her baby. He is an inside dog who wears sweaters when he goes outside and sleeps with a blanket (sometimes on her bed) during the night. When I agreed to watch him I told her ahead of time that he wouldn't be allowed in the house, he would have to stay outside with Smalls all day, and sleep in his kennel in the garage at night. Since she was ok with that and my kids love her dog we decided to go for it. We met her in Cedar on Thursday afternoon and made it home just in time to get Ethan to preschool. He kind of wanted to skip school and stay home to play with Koschei but it was show and tell day so he decided to go once I reminded him that we would have the dog all week.

 Luckily the weather was pretty decent all week (except for one day when we had torrential downpours all morning) so the kids spent a lot of time outside. Koschei and Smalls got along really well, I think they are both naturally very social dogs and were excited to have someone to play with. One day when the kids went out to play the dogs started "fighting" right by Olivia so of course Ethan hurried and ran over to save her. He was shooing the dogs away from her with one hand and then took her hand to lead her away from them. It was so cute, he is such a good big brother!

 Of course after all their playing and running around they had to take some nice afternoon naps in the sun. As you can see, Smalls is very much used to sleeping outside so he just sprawls out wherever he lands and poor little Koschei is curled up in a ball because there was a slight breeze and he's not used to sleeping outside.

 The dogs took turns eating each others food so I'm glad Koschei didn't die after eating our cheap western family dog food when he is used to his special puppy food!

 Emily warned me he would whine and whine while he was in his crate but I said I didn't care because he would be in the garage where it wouldn't bother anyone but the cat. Well it just so happened that we just bought some new pillows and I was taking the old ones out to throw away when I thought that maybe one would fit in his kennel and make it more comfortable. Well obviously it worked because one afternoon I put him in the garage to give the dogs a break from each other and when I went back out he was just relaxing in his kennel. I hadn't put him in there or anything so I guess he liked it!

Thanks Aunt Emily for letting us babysit! Thanks for visiting Koschei! Come back anytime! (Unless it's winter because no matter how much you whine you aren't coming in my house)