July 11, 2007

Last week we worked almost every night with Nokes on his different training exercises. The trainer had said that she felt like we should repeat puppy training class, and we weren’t too thrilled with the idea. I want my dog to be very obedient, but how much do I want to pay for it? I am sure five years down the line, I may say “Why didn’t I just pay the extra money and do it over again?”, but right now I don’t feel that way. We signed him up for the intro class which we will probably start around the beginning of school.

He is funny, when he knows you have food, he does pretty good. But there are times when it is like you have never taught him anything. Two class periods ago we thought he was going to mop the floor with the other dogs. It was sitting and staying, which he has done since he was really small. Well, there were some issues with him being the “dominant” puppy, or so the trainer claims. She says he was a strong one in the litter, which I don’t really get from him. A lot of that she is basis on his posture, and not how he acts. I don’t think he is overly dominant, not at least compared to other dogs I have seen. But, I do have to give her some credit for whatever training she does have.

On Friday he will go to be neutered. We weren’t sure when to have it done, we have heard contradictory things. The trainer says that it is ok to have it really young, it is better in some instances because it is less of a process when they are young. But others have told us it is too hard on them at such a young age. One thing is for sure, if we get lucky and he chills out some among other dogs after he has it done then it will be worth it to have it done now.

Last Saturday Lady was over for the day, and it was a really long day. He didn’t leave her alone all day, biting at her ears, barking at her, climbing on her, and making some humping gestures. We had experienced this in their short one hour meetings before, but it never went away, unless they both laid down and slept. It was ridiculous and really tested both Sarah and I. We had to separate them quite a bit. Lady was really good about it, most of the time she would just take it, sometimes she’d play back, and sometimes she’d just bite Nokes’ face, shoulders, or take out his legs with her head, pin him dog and bite his legs.

We’re going to try to get him over to Christine’s soon, because time is ticking away for time to get them accustomed to each other. We’ll get the surgery done, and then see if anything changes over there for a night.

Nokes is still losing teeth, we can always tell when he does because he keeps licking his mouth presumably where the blood is coming out. We know to look for a tooth floating around in there somewhere. I was trying to get something away from him that he was eating on the 4th of July, and when I pressed on his mouth with my thumb his front tooth just gave and fell out. It was gross. Kind of funny too, because he’ll have two teeth growing out of one place, looking kind of like a mutant.

He has got some sizeably larger back teeth, they look like mini mountains. I mean feakishly huge like the other dogs would make fun of him in the yard asking why his other teeth hadn’t caught up to his molars yet.

We have gotten him one of those hard Nyla bones, full size, and he just loves that. He’ll spend a ton of time chewing it, quite often we find it bloody. I assume that he is towards the end of his teething period. But he’ll still managed to mangle the one end of the bone pretty good , schredded is more like it. But it keeps him busy, and that is what we care about most.

Here are some similar arcade posts

• June 28, 2007
• June 9, 2007
• June 2, 2007
• June 14, 2007
• June 21, 2007

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