21/22 weeks old (Dec 13-27, 2025)

It has been a busy few weeks for sure but Ember and Phoenix have taken it in stride.

We made it down to Victoria for Christmas. Ember unfortunately has developed motion sickness in the car for drives longer than 15 minutes. We were able to get her some medication that helped for the trip but didn’t eliminate it completely. The vet is hopeful that she will outgrow it ( usually happens between 6mth to a year old) since she didn’t have it as a puppy. She explained it as her inner ear and her body are changing so much that it causes an imbalance and the motion sickness occurs. Fingers crossed for that. Luckily once the car stops she quickly returns to her happy self.

She really enjoyed visiting everyone at Christmas. She was abundantly curious, wanted to see everything and everyone and was generally happiest in the middle of whatever is going on.

Ember loves a jump scare. We’ll move our fingers slowly towards her and then suddenly open our hands quickly. We found out that she loves squeaky toys as they are an audible jump scare.

She continues teething and has started to like chewing toys. We found a lost tooth which is rare since dogs usually shallow them. She is much more interested in different types of bones than Phoenix who really only likes one kind.

She likes to play tug but doesn’t really like the rope section to bite on but loves the loose ends of them so I ended up making her a tug toy that has long strips of fleece after the braid which she seems to really like. Shelties are definitely the cats the of the dog world.

She has recently starting to dig a little although most of the time it is in her dog bed. She has taken a small patch of grass off but is not has the persistance as when she is in her bed.

She has grown so much. She is now the same height as Phoenix and weights 9.7kg (21.4lbs). She still has some weeks of growing left so we’ll see if she ends up taller than Phoenix. Hard to believe she was 2.7kg only 13 weeks ago. She does still have the puppy flexibility so she’ll splay out on the floor on her belly or a leg will be kicked out when sitting which can look pretty funny.

She still thinks Phoenix is the best thing ever and continues to want to near him and play with him. Thankfully, he feels the same and sometimes flops over so she “wins”. They had their first zoomies outside which was lovely to see as Phoenix hasn’t had zoomies in a long time.