My 9 Month Old Pooch

I shot this picture of him yesterday. He's gotten SOOOO big!! We weighed him a couple of weeks ago, and he weighed 69 pounds. Not an ounce of fat on him, he's pure muscle. He loves playing fetch and is learning to herd the basketball outside. He still rolls around on his back with toys, pawing the air and chomping the toy.

He outgrew his crate several weeks ago; he could still get in and snuggle into a tightly curled ball, but he couldn't stretch out at all and it just didn't feel right to expect him to sleep that way. One night he had an accident in his crate and it was taken outside for cleaning but never got brought back in.

The first few nights, I didn't feel comfortable allowing him to sleep by himself in the livingroom, so I called him to sleep with us in bed. He was so excited to get to sleep with us. Around that time, my asthma started acting up, and I started to wonder if it was because I had a dog sleeping in my bed... after all, I did test positive as being allergic to dogs. Also because he is so big, I was sleeping on the very edge of my side and dh was getting his back scratched every night due to the pooch stretching out.

So we decided to let him sleep in the living room. He is house broken, but I was worried that he might not be able to make it overnight. His being housebroken is such a HUGE thing for dh and I. When I was growing up, I remember when I was 6 years old and we had a dog that we could never get housebroken. Well duh, we were gone many hours a day. We dealt with that problem in later years by having outside only dogs. We used to babysit this one dog, a Golden Retriever named Dukie but he was housebroken by his owners. When dh and I were first married, our first Christmas, he bought me a miniature black poodle. I named her Mistletoe and we called her Missy. We could never get her housebroken. We finally gave her to one of our neighbors that wanted her. Our other dogs were already housebroken since we got them as adults. We couldn't get our sister puppies, Tess and Penny, housebroken. We just didn't know how to do it, duh!! We would let them out by themselves and then call them back in and they would wait until they came back in to potty!!!!

With LJ, I took him outside and stayed with him and told him to "go potty" and praised him when he went. He figured out what we wanted him to do.

Early Thursday morning, around 2am, I heard whining at our bedroom door. I got up because I figured LJ had to go potty. He was so happy to see me, his tail wagging hard but he was also slowly walking toward the front door, where he rang the bell.

We've trained him to not bark in the house, and this works out really wonderfully as he will look up and listen when he's inside, but mostly sleeps through hearing our other dogs barking.

I figured he had to go to the bathroom since he usually sleeps through the night. I stood on the front steps outside the front door, listening to the night sounds. Hannah, our dog pack leader was moving things around by the garden, probably after a lizard or some crawling critter. The moon was shining brightly and I could hear one of our milkers, Miss L. calling questioningly, wondering if it was time for milking yet, and what was going on over there with all that racket? One of our other dogs, Tess, ran over to see LJ. Through all this, he did his business and came running back to come indoors and continue his night's sleep. I have let him stay outside two or three nights and it is so funny because the next day he's exhausted since he's been on high alert all night long. Anyway, that was a huge breakthrough, as to me it says he is fully housetrained and he also respects that this is our territory and not to be soiled.

I was realizing the other day that he never bothers the trash. I mentioned that to dh this morning and he said that LJ did show some interest in the trash a few days ago, but he corrected him and that's that. He is so intelligent.

Oh, the latest thing he's learning is to carry the flashlight. He is so proud and excited about his light. The past week when I leave for work it's dark - that's normal since I leave at 5:30am, but I've been home late every single night and it is also dark once I arrive home (close to 7pm). LJ carries the flashlight proudly every morning and evening. There is a little rope with a ball hanging on the flashlight. Sometimes he carries it by the rope, but sometimes he carries the whole flashlight in his mouth. Backwards. So the light is shining into his throat, LOL!! He is so proud. He prances around happily, with his ears back and shoves the light into the other dogs' faces trying to show them how special he is.

I'm excited about it, because he is learning to carry something, and now he'll understand to carry other things.

He is usually anxious to go outdoors in the early morning and help with chores (cleaning the milk strip cup, mainly), but since it's been colder in the morning he has been staying indoors where it is warm and snuggly. I have a pattern for a dog sweater, I am really tempted to buy one for him from Walmart, they are only ten dollars. But I want to make him one, so I keep crocheting along on the baby sweater.

Tess and he love to play fight.

I practice a lot with him, ordering him to stop when he's very excited about something. For example, I have heard for years that you should never play tug-of-war with your dog. But then I learned that you can play tug, it's just important to follow some rules to make sure you don't end up with any problems. Interestingly enough none of the dogs will play tug with LJ. They must have figured out long ago that he can hold on longer and is stronger, so they don't even bother to play with him. He will pick up a toy to play tug with and shove it into their faces, trying to coax them into playing with him. They won't, so I do. We play tug for a few minutes at a time, then I tell him "DROP!" and he lets go of the toy right away. I have him sit, then tell him "Catch!" and toss the toy directly to him. He is getting better at catching, especially if the tug toy is floppy.

He was so mouthy for the longest time, but he has grown past that stage as well. I worked with him on bite inhibition, so he understands that he must be gentle with hands.

I didn't understand in the beginning when he was biting so much all the time, that he was just being a puppy!! It's a normal part of being a puppy to bite everything all the time! He has absolutely no aggressive behavior with regards to food, even his beloved *bones* that he gets every day. We have been buying him beef back ribs and having the butcher cut them into 4 inch long pieces and he just loves them. I can take him bone right out of his mouth and pretend to nibble on it myself and he just watches me with curiosity.

He's an awesome dog.

Until next time.