My past 2 weekends with Akira!

2 weeks ago I again found myself taking a breather from work and hectic city life while enjoying myself alongside Akira in our summer house. Again I was welcomed with a warm hug that took about 10-15 minutes. Then we played chase which made me think I was going to have a heart attack after 5 minutes. She is incredibly fast and impossible to catch. Anyway when I stopped chasing her to sit on the couch she placed her head on my foot so we rested there for about 30 minutes. That 30 minutes soothed me more than a 12-hour non-stop sleep ever did.

This time I wasn't empty handed, I came bearing gifts. Prior to that week I had bought Akira a pink dress. I hate the colour pink but it is a fact that it makes Akira even more adorable. 

Speaking of dresses on dogs, I am against it and I am not being a hypocrite by dressing up my dog, let me explain what I mean by that. Akira only has 2 clothes, one of them was knitted by my mum because the first one I bought wasn't thick enough. We needed these clothes when she was fully shaved. I could see her shaking like a leaf in her bed. Before I bought that shirt and mom knitted the sweater, we'd put a long towel on her and she'd still shake. It was obvious that she was cold. Akira is not the type of dog that would stay on a lap but when she was shaved she would even fall asleep on my lap because of the warmth. Aside from those two clothes I wanted to buy this dress to dress her up for like 5-10 minutes to take gazillions of pictures to keep as memories. After that I'd just put the dress in a shelf. Because I see that it is worth it to pay like 30 dollars for a dress to take tons of pictures to keep as memories forever. So before you get extra critical on me, think again after reading this :D

They didn't have the original dress I wanted in XXL size even though their website showed that it was in stock. Anyway their customer representative said it was a mistake on their part and they only had size XL so they recommended me another dress. That dress also looked like its XXL size was in stock but it turns out it was also a mistake. They never had XXL sizes of those two dresses but they recommended me the second dress because the representative said the fabric of that particular dress might stretch. She said if it didn't fit they'd happily make a full refund of my money or give me a gift certificate or exchange it with another product from their website. 

I fully trust the website as I regularly buy Akira's accessories from there so I decided to get the dress they recommended. It was an incredibly cute dress and I knew it would look good on Akira. But Akira is fat!!! I mean not fat like I overfeed her. She gets the exact daily dose she needs to get and she is a pretty playful dog. But she is a size 3 terrier and as most clothes on that website are for toy breeds or smaller sized dogs like size 1 or 2 so most of the things don't fit Akira just like this dress. It didn't look that much uncomfortable but it was obvious that it didn't fit. But it didn't stop me from taking pictures :D Here are some of them:

She seemed excited at first especially when she saw the package it was worth it to see her wiggly tail. Anyway when I actually tried to put on the bloody thing she suddenly changed her character. It took me about 15 minutes to put on the dress. She growled and made funny noises but I handled her with a couple roasted chick peas. She just can't say no when she is given rewards.

I kept trying to take pictures but I guess she got really bored. She always tried to lie down so I had to lift her all the time. It was a non-stop hassle.

It was quite difficult to get her attention after a while. I think she is tired of posing for me. Ever since I got her when she was 2 months old, I kept taking her pictures and so far she's been a fantastic model for me. I guess she was trying to figure out what my camera was, maybe that's why she kept posing but as time passed I think she got used to the camera so it doesn't interest her anymore. So I have to try millions of different things to capture her attention from holding out rewards in my hand to trying to make weird noises.

Now there is a beautiful pose! It wasn't that hard was it Akira?

After my numerous failed attempts at trying to capture her attention, I found the best solution to be holding her head towards the camera! :D

Isn't she a beauty? Anyway as the dress didn't fit her I decided to exchange it with a harness. I am afraid of harnesses because Akira once got out of one during a very busy traffic time and the place was surrounded by fast passing cars from all 4 sides. This happened when dad took her for a walk to a park that is on the other side of the road. She could have escaped from her harness on that road and if this had happened I'd have probably lost my baby. But I am really really really thankful that when she escaped, she was on a sidewalk and she didn't run off to the road. She ran off to the door of our home and she simply waited there for my dad. Unbelievable. When I got down she was on my dad's lap. I've never been that terrified in my WHOLE life. I really mean that. I was on the balcony 4 floors above watching the whole thing when it happened. And I wanted to jump off the balcony so I could reach her faster rather than taking the stairs or the elevator. I didn't even put on my shoes when I sprinted to the stairs. 

Anyway after this shocker I decided to always put the leash on her collar. Because it is nearly impossible to get out of a collar. But she pulls a lot on our walks and I am afraid that something bad is going to happen to her neck. So I thought I'd try out a harness from that company that had wings on it. It looked pretty sweet. 

So I made the exchange after I left the summer house 2 weeks ago. I also had bought her a hairpin from an American company but it took them 3 weeks to deliver the shipment which was unfortunate because I wanted to use the hairpin to match with the dress but it didn't happen. But the shipment arrived on the same day as the harness so I could try them out both. However I decided to take pictures of them separately. I also had another hairpin that I bought months ago so it allowed me to try on both of the hairpins at the same time which ended up with me taking wonderful pictures. These pictures weren't taken from my DSLR camera as its battery was empty. They were taken from my Galaxy S4 so their resolution will be lower than the pictures above. My phone takes fantastic photos but Akira is hyperactive so some of them are a bit blurry because she kept moving.

I had food on the ottoman. It was potatoes and eggs. Akira is in love with eggs, I guess it was a nice way to capture her attention to take this beautiful picture. Of course I rewarded her with some afterwards. She certainly deserved it. She doesn't like hairpins, which dog likes them really? So I wanted to take as many pictures as possible as soon as I secured both of them on her. She sometimes forgets about their existence but suddenly something reminds her of them and she starts trying to remove them with her paws. It's actually a very sweet scene.

As I said before she lied down everytime I tried to take a picture. It got even worse when I put the hairpin on her. So instead of torturing my beautiful dog by lifting her up, I just let her lie there while I only tried to lift her head up towards the camera. And it's obvious from the picture that she probably got annoyed :D

But then she was happy again!

But then she got even more annoyed! :D

It was quite a struggle to put on the harness because its clips made this loud noise and Akira is afraid of noises. She is a big fat coward really. Anyway I rewarded her with her favourite treats, dental calcium bones. I cut them in small pieces and kept giving the treats while I put on the harness with the help of my mum. She was still afraid but we finally managed to put it on. Believe me, it was even harder to take her pictures with it. I wanted her to turn her head to look at me so both the design of the harness and her head would appear in the picture but as you can see I couldn't manage to get her to do that...

As you can understand my two weekends were fantastic. I got to spend a lot of time with my beautiful dog. But I can't say the same thing for this weekend as she is in Istanbul with my parents to visit my brother. Istanbul is about 3-4 hours away from where I work so it was best I stayed home and rested. Otherwise it'd have been a waste as most of the day would be spent on the road and I wouldn't have enough time to spend with her anyway. But there will be a 4-day holiday in 3 days so I won't have to wait till the next weekend to see her again. I wonder what kind of adventures we'll be taking on together :)