Tails + Paws | Kylo Turns 1!

Kylo turned 1 when we were on our cruise this past month, so I’m just now getting around to celebrating his birthday with a cake smash session, of course. 🙂 A grain-free cake full of apple, peanut butter & greek yogurt, complete with a birthday candle. Mikayla sang him happy birthday in the backyard while he was checking out some birds. I can’t believe that he’s 1. I think back to the amount of insanity we endured when we first picked this little nugget up last year. How tiny he was. How insanely excited he was to see a human. How he made Mikayla a prisoner on the couch since he’d chase & nip her whenever she’d walk throughout a room. How he’d jump up & bite our pants when we’d walk by. How he ate through a dog bed, 10 bath towels, legos, trash cans, toilet paper rolls, crayons, his dog tags, drank toilet water, ate the IV out of his leg upon awakening from his snip snip. How he’d rip blades of grass from our ridiculous excuse of a yard that we had only hoped would grow from being a new build, but nope… Kylo thought otherwise. How he’d eat mulch like it was nothing. Imagine that coming back out the other end. And bath towel strings hanging from his butt as he’d sprint around the yard with nothing but straight panic in his eyes. How he’d sit & watch Mikayla walk through the yard, and then sprint to tackle her from behind.

When I look back, I see how much progress he has made over the year. It sure has been a whole lot of work. Tears. More work. Lots of patience. He’s broken many of those bad habits thankfully, both by simply growing up & of course a whole of training… but he most definitely would still eat from those bathroom trash cans & drink that toilet water should he have the chance. I’m just glad he doesn’t eat his own poop.

He had big shoes to fill coming into this house after we had to endure one of the most awful experiences of our lives with our previous dog. He’s been more frustrating in so many more ways than Diesel ever was, but at least Kylo loves people. He doesn’t try to attack them when they come into our home, or when on walks around the neighborhood, or at the vet when they stab him with a shot. He simply wags his tail & licks them obsessively with way too much vocalism. We also actually get to clip his nails ourselves. It’s so nice when have family or friends over to visit & we don’t have to put him away for safety. We just had friends with a child here yesterday and once we get the initial meet & greet madness out of the way, he calms down & the loudness goes away. His OCD licking however, that will stay. We obviously have been working on that with him since we’d like people to come back, so don’t think that we simply will allow him to do so 🙂 He gets plenty of time-outs.

I hope someday I can look back at this 1 year recap & see how much more he’s calmed down. Some people tell me it’s the lab in him, others say it’s the pit, so who knows. All I know, is that it’s pretty darn nice to just have a dog that loves humans. As I type this, he looks so darn adorable all curled up at my feet in the playroom, just snoozing away. In hindsight, we probably should have named him Tux since it always looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo. Looking dapper & all.

First, a trip down memory lane, followed by his 1st birthday cake smash session in the backyard 🙂