State Attack!

Sammy more than doubled the amount of states he has been to this past weekend. Not that it was hard. Sammy had been to South Dakota and Nebraska. Now he can say that he has been to South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois. Quite the little traveller, eh! We have had this trip planned for a while. I have family that lives in Illinois. My cousin, her husband and three kids come to Omaha quite often to visit all the family here. Erik and I are quite close to them and love to see them at any possible chance! Sammy looooves them, especially the kiddos. Origianally we were going to go back this past spring break, but my grandpa's health was in a quick decline, and we never quite made it. So instead, we pushed it back to this fall. Neither Erik or Sammy had been there before, so I was super excited to show it off! "Where's we goin Momma?" Our detour through Missouri was already explained two blogs ago. Next we continued our journey to Illinois! Sammy was exhausted after seeing Normy and the kitties, so he esentially awakened in Illinois. We were staying with my cousins, and they have a puppy themselves. Eva. She often is called Eva the Diva. Eva is a doberman mix who will be a year old this Halloween. She has been extremely timid. We were hoping for the best with Sammy and Eva, and we got it! Immediately Sammy picked up on her timid nature and exploited it. Immediately Eva was very interested in the Sammy pants. She kept coming up to him, and he kept showing his teeth. We think that this is a reaction from Max, Erik's sister's dog. Max is around the same age and has a very lean, taller than Sammy body as well as energy to spare. Max is more agressive with Sammy than most dogs and really doesn't ever slow down or take it easy on Sammy, so Sammy usually needs me to intervene. Eva however, would not be of the same nature, but Sammy didn't know that. Over our weekend, Sammy continued to show his teeth, but would often have his ears down or kiss her with his teeth snarled. It really didn't make any sense to have the aggressive teeth mixed with the passive ears and licking, so we were really confused by it. Both Eva and Sammy would wag their tails (or nubs) so we just let it go since neither seemed to have a problem with it. Eva figured out how to get Sammy to chase her. Sammy being such a little good herder could never resist. Those two wore themselves out doing this. I tried and tried and tried to get a video of them, but Sammy being a little poser when the cameras come out, I never got a good one. I did get one of them kinda chasing each other and one of them wrestling, but that was it. They mainly enjoyed running around the kitchen table. They just kept going and going and going. It was hard for them to go around, but they kept at it. Then would divert into the family room, and back into the kitchen and around the table. Silly pups.

Sammy loved being around the kids, too. He loved all the attention he got from everyone. Sammy loved all the action in the kitchen. He was ready for anything to fall! He doesn't remember the Nebraska game too much. And remembers some of the game night. We played the Wii Fit Plus. Mostly it was Erik and my oldest cousin that night. Here is our home video of some of that evening. It's not up on our YouTube page, but I will put it up here because it shows how much Sammy is loved and just how tired he was to sleep through all the fun! PS...the Wii fit is awesome! It's now on our Christmas list!Sammy loved naptime. And although he love, love, loved it there, he really loved coming back home where all is his, there are no children, and plenty of naps.