Nokes (Our Dog)
Nokes jumped the couch!
Last night I am in the game / guest room playing my Jr. Pac-man, and Sarah is in the downstairs living room playing with Nokes. All of a sudden she is laughing hysterically.
I ask her what he did, and she said I had to come out and check this out. She told Nokes to stay by me, and then ran to the other side of the couch and called him. He went trotting around to her and I had no idea what the big deal was. Then she ran quickly over to me and he jumped up on the couch back over, face first into the cushions and then down onto the floor. When she ran back, he jumped it again, this time starting out easier on the cushions and over the back down the long drop.
Not a good thing to be teaching him, and not good on his body either, but really cute and hilarious.
He is our lovable chunk. We weighed him for the first time in a long time, not figuring he weighed that much more from when he was 35lbs. Well, he clocked in at 66-67 lbs! We both couldn’t believe it, and are both a little worried. We usually walk him 3-4 times a week on the off gym days so we thought he was getting enough exercise, but apparently not. The weight just seems really high, and affects some other things like…how much we feed him, his flea medication, etc. etc.
Sarah is going to try to get him to the vet in her days off this week to see if he is overweight or what the deal is. He is one heavy puppy
Nokes does love me…
On my two days off last week, Nokes and I got to go on walks in the morning before I started my day. It was nice to not feel so rushed to fit so much stuff in, and be able to take time to appreciate the small stuff like spending time with our Noksie.
But even those nights, I was up later than Sarah, and both of those nights Nokes came downstairs and laid down in my office until I went to bed. Sometimes I forget that he even likes me because of all the attention Sarah gets, but on days like these I remember.
I had another thought yesterday. Whenever we have a wet dew, Nokes doesn’t really like to go out, doesn’t like getting his sissy paws wet. But when Mimi is out, he’ll go out anyway. But then he’ll come inside and do crazy dog, sprinting up and down the hallways as many as 6 times back and forth. I wonder if it is to dry off his paws. Towards the tail end he’ll start jumping on me and growling, which really sucks in shorts, but I had my thick bathrobe on and it hangs really low, so I let him go to town. “Do your worst you crazy clawed furball”, so it was fun to play rough without too much worry of getting shredded.
Nokes likes to eat Sarah’s toys
I have noticed this in the past, but lately in particular. When Sarah isn’t home, and her office is open, Nokes will go in there, find something, and drag it out into the living room to chew on it. He is mommies puppy for sure, so I don’t know if this is an anxiety thing until she gets home, or what…But today he go Eigor the keychain plush, and her Huge Tequila foam hat while I was on the phone.
Pretty cute, I wonder if he smells her and that helps.
Nokes almost got a squirrel
I was having a snack before dinner after I got home yesterday, and Nokes was whining to go out. Immediately after I let him out he went full speed to the back by the tomato bush. It wasn’t until he was almost all the way back that I saw what he was after, a squirrel. It was hard to see by the bush, and we don’t get a whole lot of squirrels in our yard anyway. That may be the first I can remember seeing.
He almost got him too. The squirrel dashed one way but couldn’t get out and then went the other way and got under the fence.
I really didn’t want to have to clear a squirrel out of Noksie’s mouth anyway.
It was today that I really saw him chase the birds with such focused intent that Sarah was talking about as well. We were on our afternoon walk and we went right by a fence full of birds. They scattered as we went by and he about went into a tizzy.
Nokes is getting stronger
Lately he has been really into playing tug with his frisbee kong. Sarah doesn’t like to do this with him, but I think it is pretty fun, so I do. Sometimes he’ll win, but usually only if I let him. But he really shakes the heck out of my arm. But in the last few days, I have found it even more fun to let him win on his back tug. He tugs so hard that sometimes he springs back up on his back legs, almost flipping himself over. At the very least the motion causes him to throw his head back and the frisbee above his head.
Dave saw Nokes this week after a hiatus, and called him a monster, so he must be getting a little bigger. We heard this week from some friends that a dog will grow 75% of their total size in the first year, and the last 25% in the second year. So, I suppose he could get a little bigger yet, which would be great. He is getting thicker, and I love that about him.
Nokes Photos Added
I added some new photos to our online photo gallery of Nokes today. Most of them are over the last month, including a handful of photos from when Chapman’s were down.
There are some cute ones of Nokes drinking water from a water bottle outside, some tandem photos of Nokes with Hunter watching out the door, sleeping, or hanging out in the car, and some of just Nokes around the house.
Nokes likes to eat bunnies?
We don’t know, but suppose we’ll find out soon enough.
This is the third day in just over a week that he has found one outside and gone running after it uncontrollably. Usually they are outside of the fence in the gutterway, but tonight it was inside the fence and Sarah was scared that he was going to “play” with it with his mouth.
“What would you do if he came up to you with a bunny in his mouth?” I said I probably wouldn’t be thrilled, more for my cleanup of myself and the dog, than being upset he killed a bunny. Usually I yell to go “Bite dat bunny Noksie”, which really gets Sarah riled up, but it would be nice if he just did the exercise part and left the doggie-teeth-in-bunny-tush part out.
