First off, condolences to those who lost pets recently. I know what that's like.
Just thought I'd post an update on my dog. Thanks to Blarg for the advice. This was Nutmeg when we got her...about nine or ten weeks old.
This is The Nut yesterday...about six months old and she weighs a little over thirty pounds.
She does pretty good with other dogs...she's been through puppy obedience school and now she's doing dog obedience school. She's not afraid of anything yet. They put the dogs through a big plastic tunnel, and some dogs won't go....even the two American bulldogs and the German Shepherd wouldn't go at first. Nutmeg did it no problem. She's very friendly to strangers, and loves to pee when she gets excited....but she's growing out of that. She hasn't torn up hardly anything in the house, except for my laptop power cord that cost me $60 to replace. Yeesh.
We took her camping for Memorial weekend. She had a blast. There were four other dogs that we let her roam around with. They made fast friends. She got to play in the river by our campsite (wish I had some pictures) and get her paws wet. She did venture out too far in the river once and had to swim a bit to get to safer ground. She wore herself out so much with running around that she didn't hardly do anything on the last day. At dinner one night, one of the other dogs (named Spencer) made off with most of my friend's steak when he put it on the ground. Naturally, my friends that own Spencer are vegetarians, so Spencer was tasting REAL MEAT for the first time I'll bet. No more veggie bacon for that dog. We did take Nutmeg's crate with us when we went camping, but it was pretty cold up there....so we let her sleep with us some. She'd bite my ears to wake me up.
We figure Nutmeg will get to be about 40-45 pounds fully grown. We were originally told that she is Australian Shepherd, but vets have told us she's got more Heeler or Australian Cattle Dog in her. Doesn't matter much to us though. Her crate training is working out awesome. She hasn't messed in the house in weeks. She's a good dog. We take her as many places as we can to get her used to people and other dogs. She likes Lowe's.....so much that last time we took her, she peed all over the floor inside. Her favorite toy is the basket we put the rest of her toys in....go figure. My wife and I are really looking forward to finishing dog obedience training and maybe putting her in agility classes.