August 23, 2007

• The Baron Becomes Brave

  Baron finally got brave and made it down the stairs. In fact, he did it without prodding because he wanted to get down in the grass and pee. He’s really been amazing at how quickly he became housebroken. Here it is a week since we brought him home and he’s only had one close call…..and that was our fault because we just didn’t move fast enough. But what can you expect of old people….LOL

  I couldn’t do a daily posting because the Beast has been sick. That left only me to walk, feed and play with the pup as will as tending to the Beast. He’s seldom been sick enough to spend most of his day in bed so I knew this wasn’t his usual *overdo* type thing. He’s done very little this week so that should have been my first clue. He hasn’t even heard the pup’s whining during the night for the last two nights and he usually hears him way before I do.

  If I have a few more nights like these past couple, we will both need nurses….LOL. I really need more sleep than I have been getting and any restorative granny napping just isn’t happening. It’s either the Beast, the pup or the damn phone interfering.

  Baron continues to tickle me with some of his antics. He was given a plastic pot that is like a planter to play with. It actually held stuff for starting green pepper plants but was never used since I had plenty of real ones around here to use. Mostly he carried it around and shook it or rolled it and barked at it. Yesterday he dropped it down the stairs (I left it where it fell because I do NOT fetch for any pup or you know where that leads). When he first braved the stairs to retrieve it, he actually stepped on it and caused it to cave in the side. It no longer resembles what he carried around so he kept going to lift it up in his mouth, then dropping it, jumping back and barking at it. He finally did carry it up to the deck but while chasing it around the deck, it fell down the steps again. This time he left it there because he was done playing with it by then.

  This morning, while having my coffee after the morning walk with Baron, he noticed his * toy* was not on the deck and peered down the steps at it laying there at the bottom. He kept staring at it and barked like he expected it to jump up to the top of the stairs for him. He made a little jump and barked again at it. After crouching down and staring at it again for about 5 minutes, he decided he had better go down there and make it come up with him. He carefully picked his way down the stairs and fetched it back up to the deck where he proudly displayed his *catch* to both the Beast and me. After he was done with that, he decided to chew on his rawhide strip for a bit, then his biscuit and back to the rawhide. He kept running between the two like he couldn’t make up his mind which one he really wanted or else he got tired of them quickly. He suddenly went down the stairs again, much more confidently this time and pranced over to his favorite area to relieve his bladder then trounced back up the stairs to chew on his chew things again.

  This time he had a surprise. I had gone into the house to add another chewing object to his selection. I brought out a nice cold carrot (our vet had suggested it since he seems to be starting to teethe). Now he really was nutty with having three different objects to chew. I just laughed and laughed at his antics as he went frantically from one to the other for about 20 minutes. After all that exhausting chewing, he finally turned his back on all of them (literally) and flopped down under the Beast’s chair and went promptly to sleep. I was a brute and woke him up to make him sleep in his crate since I really do want him to get used to using it for sleeping most of the time. He gave me a little tiny bark but went in and promptly fell over asleep again. I left the door open because I didn’t want him to feel he HAD to be in it. Besides, I can see if he wakes up and starts roaming around the house from my chair out on the deck. He is, after all, still a puppy and if unsupervised, he WILL chew whatever strikes his fancy while he’s in this teething mode. If we are around, he can only nibble and gets an immediate correction. I’ve learned since he was left inside alone while I attended watering some plants outside and found one of my sneakers missing when I went to put my shoes back on later to walk him. I knew immediately he had at least considered chewing on it and had carried it into his favorite corner to hide. I checked the shoe thoroughly and didn’t find teeth marks anywhere so……I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Who knows what a dog thinks? Maybe he was just trying to trick me. It COULD happen, yes it could. Maybe.

  The Beast is up and about for a bit but I know he still is not feeling well. He says he feels like he is getting a chest cold but he doesn’t sound like it. He’s been a bit feverish but not badly. His stomach is feeling *queasy* he says and it must be true because he just isn’t eating like normal at all. He’s not even snacking like he normally does. He’s playing Hearts on Pogo so I figured I would take this time to bring the blog up-to-date. I might even get a game or two in myself while he’s up

  We got two estimates so far on fencing part of our yard and, unless this third guy has something new to offer, we have pretty much decided on whom we are using. It’s a smaller company but the savings is enough for us to throw the work their way as long as they don’t make us wait any longer than we were told (a week to 10 days). It will be wood towards the street and down the side (our next door neighbor has a wood fence so we really only have to put up fencing down one side of the yard) and 5 ft. chain link at the rear so our view isn’t blocked. We can see over the fence from the deck so I’m not worried about that part of our *view*. At least the dog won’t be able to roam at will once it’s up. We DO worry about him being too curious and roaming when we know we couldn’t keep up and he is still too much of a pup to obey every time. They really ARE a lot like babies, only more mobile.

  Have a great evening everyone and a wonderful day tomorrow. We will be having another triple digit day (it’s 102 degrees here at almost 5pm) tomorrow. It’s not expected to cool down much until the end of next week. That’s something else that doesn’t help the Beast. He really cannot take the heat any more. He used to work in it all the time when we had our company. Not that he did much of the actual work but he was usually running around to give our employees a hand if they ran into problems at any of our commercial customers sites. The problem with having an air conditioning company is that you never really get to work in anything but heat….LOL.

  Love ya’ll.

  • 6:06 pm
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