the dog update

My dog at about 8 weeks and 10 weeks later.  He'll triple his weigh before the year is over, weighing between 120 and 150 as an adult dog.  If ... !
He is an eating machine.
He is now, for the most part, "house trained".  I can't remember when he had his last accident, but I expect we haven't seen the last of those. He likes to try to empty out waste baskets in the house shredding paper towel and getting cotton balls stuck in his mouth.  He still can't grasp the fact that our shoes are not chew toys.  In the sense of understanding what is okay and what is not okay inside the house we have a ways to go.  Yesterday he began to pull the turquoise pipping away from one of the grey club chairs.  He stretches my patience ... .
He does love to go on walks and does a good job of behaving well on the leash.  Without a leash he loses his ability to hear well.  I really like that he looks up when airplanes pass overhead ... and birds. He is keenly aware of what is going on around him, which is great.  He will sit and lay down on request when properly bribed to do so.  He brings the ball back every time it is thrown.  I had forgotten how much work goes in to getting an animal trained.
It'll be worth all the effort.

On Tuesday he got in the river and found some crawdads ... and I'm guessing ate some ... major allergic reaction apparent a few hours later.  I thought it must be a bee sting because he is always looking for a bee to bother around the glass doors.  Husband sheepishly acknowledged that he saw the dog messing with the mudbugs.  Woke up the next morning with his snout back to normal, it had looked like a horse snout!  He was in the water "fishing" at every opportunity on the next walk.  I understand that allergic reactions become more severe with each exposure so I'm trying to nip his young pup and the river tendencies in the bud.

December 2016