The Past Few Days

Dog Blog Post #132: Yes, I'm behind. Gee, what a surprise.

Sunday:

Wow - Henry slept through the night! And I didn’t even have to sleep on the floor next to the crate, or sleep with my hand through the mesh. It wasn’t a long night, I’ll grant you that; 12:30am to 5:45, but there wasn’t a sound the entire time!

We found out that he loves playing with paper bags and cardboard boxes, adores tug and rope toys, and is (so far) a gentle soul. He had about 20 min. of play in him, followed by an hour or so of sleep, and then he piddled. Kept the pattern up most of the day.

Sunday afternoon he mets lots of people at the indoor sports place while son was playing Lacrosse. We had him on a mat as I don't think dogs are supposed to be there, but as the staff all stopped by and cooed at him I didn't feel too guilty. Discovered he really is noise insensitive (as his temperament test claimed) although his hearing appears to be quite sharp.

That night he totally crashed (not surprisingly) and once again, slept through the night (12:15am to 6am)

Monday:

Awwww...

We are starting to phase in the crate for daytime use, and while he seems to be accepting it calmly (a vanilla yogurt slathered frozen teething KONG can’t hurt) he is still getting hotter than I would like.

The 100+F weather is killing potty training, which had been going surprisingly well While he would paw to go out, when I put him in the ex-pen it was just too hot, and he let me know it by sitting there miserably and panting.

No pee.

As soon as he was back inside, the floodgates would open.

(sigh)

I can’t say I blame him. Just a few more days of things and it should cool down, so hopefully things will improve after that. Thankfully, once it cooled down that night, he was back to being able to "perform".

Zachary seems to be wracking his brain trying to figure out how to get play value out of the little guy. He switched tactics on Monday and tried lying on his back, all four feet in the air, and wagging his whole body as Henry pounces on him.

Good idea, but at 75lb vs. 10lb of young puppy, it’s still a total mismatch.

So there I was, with both hands in the mix, trying to buffer the worst of the wiggling.

Training: We worked on sit, a lured down (ugly), spin (lured), hand targeting (not bad!) and stand.

He really has Sit and Stare down, and tries it whenever anyone stands still. It’s a lovely stare, soft and warm and steady and is guaranteed to melt you to a puddle.

Late afternoon rolled around he totally crashed – and stayed crashed for pretty much the rest of the day. Kinda scary, really. I wondered if he didn’t feel good, but he ate well, his temperature seemed fine, all bodily fluids looked like they should (I noted as I wiped them off the kitchen floor), even checked his gums (nice and pink) but all he wanted to do was sleep. And sleep. And sleep. Wasn’t panting, didn’t feel hot, but was just a limp rag.

In fact he slept nearly non-stop from 1pm to 8pm – with the occasional break to chew a bit of rawhide, eat dinner, “get busy”, and… that’s about it.

At 8pm, feeling worried and desperate, I moved him to the Living room (carpet) to see if somehow the hardwood floors were a problem (he does slip on them quite a bit), and he just took off - scampering, running around, spinning, sprinting, chasing, and exploring,… for about an hour, and then crashed hard for the rest of the day.

Sooo… was the problem the room (floors)? The time of day? The temperature?

Who knows. We’ll see how Tuesday goes.

(Sorry about the poor quality of the pictures, I'm trying to keep the house as cool as possible, so the blinds are mostly drawn and it's pretty dark in here!)