It's been ages since I have kept my diary of my best buddy luke. Luke is such a great companion and more than I ever dreamed he would be. I was expecting to bond and fall in love with him but I cant explain what has actually occured he is so great!

 

 So far he has been in wonderful health and his coat is just beautiful. He keeps himself in shape and loves to chase things out of his yard. I only wish he knew how to use a toilet. This August he will be 3 years old and we look foreward to many more years with him. It is totally sureal living with such a creature.

Well a few things have changed since I last posted. Luke is not allowed free roam of the house anymore. I came home one day and he chewed the arm of the couch off. Everyone said he would be an angel till 9months and they were right!!! Thanks for the jinks!! 

 

Anyways he likes to chew his bed up, even if he is in his crate with plenty of chew toys and soup bones. So we are working on that right now. He also lifts his leg now to mark every tree and pole when on a walk. He will be 10 months on June 28th 2006.

 

 

Well, Luke is getting his first glimpse of warm weather since he has been born. You can really tell on walks now that he can smell all kinds of stuff. He loves to play ball now. He also loves to trim the tree braches on anything in sight. Luke got his Rabies vaccination at 8months old  and is now licensed.

 

He still is doing great indoors and has full run of the house while we are away. He has taken one throw pillow from the couch and chewed the stuffing out of it and of course we cant leave shoes out. But he is doing great.

 

We recently moved his crate from the room it was in and put it in a spare bedroom. Luke still would lie on the floor where his crate used to be for a couple days like he wanted it back there. But he is now liking it back in a quiet area to get away.

Well luke came in the other day with a nice cut on his leg. We did not have much stuff around the house for first aid, so it was off to the drug store.

 

We got some Petflex bandage stuff and some cleanser and closed him up.

He would not stop chewing off the bandage...So he is now a cone head :P

Luke graduated today from basic obediance training class. He also passed the AKC Canine Good Citizen Award.

Well Luke is doing very well with training so far. But I still am going to take him to class. I want him to get his AKC good citizen award and make some dog friends. We start on Febuary 4th.

Well we were watching a movie last night...and low and behold someone else was in the front row watching along.  He is able to hop into the front row of seats from the rear riser we have in our theater room.

 

He looked to cool and cozy to reprimand.

Well luke has been with us for 5 weeks. He is a very good boy. He can sit, shake, and down on command. He does not like to go down unless he is on carpet though. He has not tried to chew on our stuff yet either. Today there is a couple inches of snow that fell and he seems to think its cool. I will get some pictures of him playing in the snow today and post them later. He also finished his first 33lb. bag of food.

We went to the vet today. Everything looks good. He did not cry when getting his vaccine.

We also have been on 2 1-mile walks around our block this week. He does not seem to have a problem making it this far. He only likes to go on a walk if his sister goes too.

Luke can sit on command. And he can Shake.

Well so far Luke has not had any accidents in the house in over a week. He goes all the way off the deck to go to the bathroom. He is also not crying in the middle of the night anymore either. What a relief. He is starting to get very vocal towards cleo when playing with her, and he is still a goofball.

Well today he is staying outside a little more longer. He likes to pick up little sticks and try to run away with them. Cleo takes them away, and they have finally started to play chase and tug on the stick away from each other a little bit. We still have a ways to go for cleo to accept him as her pal, but I think she is starting to sense that we are not just babysitting him anymore.

 

He is eating 1.5 cups twice a day now without any problems and he is so shiny and playful.

His new Kyra bed showed up yesterday, It is very nice and looks to be a long lasting bed for him to relax on.

He wont jump up onto it yet, but that is to be expected he will get plenty of use out of it soon.

Well, It was a long nite again. He seems to be consistent with getting up at 3am and 7am to potty. I'm sure this will take a couple weeks for him to last a little longer between potty breaks.

 

He is eating really well today and drinking plenty of fluids. I started him in Enzymes today also.

We are fedding him Eagle Pack brand large/giant breed Puppy food.

 

He is beginning to stay awake longer during the day and starting to grab hold of toys and run with them. He is also trying to get cleo to play with him (our yorkie) but she wants nothing to do with any of that nonsense

 

No accidents in the house still and he is such an angel, It just seems a little bit too good to be true around here at the moment

 

Well he still wont go down the stairs from the deck yet on his own, but he will finally go up them without to much fuss. He likes to try and bite carpet now too.

Well the night did not go too bad. Luke is quite the cry baby, who does not want to be left out of sight for one minute. He was not too happy being put in a crate (even with plenty of lovable toys and warm blankets).

 

But we decided it would be best to just let him whine it out in there. After about an hour of howling and carrying on he finally dozed off for about 3 hours. 3am luke starts howling again, I got up to come and check on him, being carefull not to let him out for crying but to wait till he calmed down before letting him out. I took him outside and he went potty right away (so far no accidents in the house) Back inside and into the crate he went. He cried for about another half hour and then back to sleep. 6am howling again, this time for about 10 min I never got up.

730am howling again, I got up and let him outside he went poop and pee outside. We came back in and I started feeding him by hand and worked my way into him eating out of his bowl. He ate about a cup of food this morning.

Still has not touched his water though after numerous attempts of tryin to coax him into taking at least a sip. Im sure he will come around. UH OH!! as I am writing this Marisa is yelling out "Oh no he is peeing on the floor, what do I do?" LOL take him out...Hurry!!

 

 First accident on the floor 915 am.

 

 

well we just got luke earlier this evening. So far he has gone potty outside twice, and none inside!!

He ate just a few peices of food, and wont drink any water yet but its only been four hours. Im sure he is just still a little freaked out with the new move.

 

 

 We ran out to see the puppies again today. I was'nt feeling well so we made it short but we did decide to bring home the puppy with the most white on him. There were some other puppies there that were from litters that she studded out to there today also. They were very cute.

Today we got to see the puppies for the first time. They are 4 weeks old today.

They were very cute of course and we could not pick one out yet. I just was not able to see their personalities at 4 weeks of age. So we will be heading back next weekend and maybe we will pick him out then. We have decided to name him LUKE.  Luke was a black lab/shepard/collie mix that I used to watch when I was a kid. I was really attatched to Luke and him to me. His owner moved away to the U.P. and I was heartbroken. His owner did come down and pick me up to spend a week in the U.P. with her and Luke, she was a Teacher For FFA in a high school up there. That was my first time out of the city and I got to see what Farm life was like, well to make a long story short we never had a big dog in our family as a kid and now I finally have the space to have one so I am going name him after my best friend when I was 9 yrs old.

Well I have been shopping around for a few items to get ready for my new pal. Everyone says that the Midwest Collosal is the crate of all crates for the great dane because of its heavy gage zinc coating and drop pin construction and enormous size. The  thing is most of the pet stores around here have stopped carrying them becuase midwest discontinued them. Some places still have a few lying around and you can find some online. The best deal I have found online was $299.00 for the cage,pan, and divider. Shipping is included in that price which is around  $65.00 (its pretty heavy). I had tracked down my childhood friends parents whom I have not seen in 6-7 years to get ahold of my childhood friend in california, I remember that they used to have a Merle Boy named duke when we were teenagers. I asked them some questions about life with duke etc...told them how I was getting one too. To my suprise they said Hey we have duke's old crate....its taking up room in the Garage why dont you take it away from us.

 

It looks like maybe an older version of a colossal, it has the exact dimensions of one and the metal pan in the bottom does have a midwest stamp on it. That just saved me a few hundred bucks in my book. Still need to find a divider though....maybe I can just use a smaller crate that we have lying around here to potty train with until he outgrows that.

 

See Photo's of the Crate in the photo album.