I’m almost entirely out of the apartment, but not quite, and I clearly cannot leave her in a house where workmen might be coming through, so Laev had to go nearly everywhere with me as she — surprise! — is not quiet in her crate. We’ll work on that, of course, but in the meantime I don’t want to subject the neighbors I’ll soon lose to her cacophony.
This is bad for crate training, but it’s great for bonding and travel training. By the end of her first 24 hours in this state, she has logged socialization meetings with 19 people (and seen many more), including skirts, hats, beards, and a small child, two motorcycles, five cats, and three safe (and very limited) dog interactions. She’s also climbed a massive piled tarp, feeling it crumple and shift beneath her feet, stumbled into puddles in the same tarp, and learned to navigate the boardwalk into our house with no finished steps. She’s also learned to travel well, already jumping at the back of the car and settling quietly in her crate as we drive. Not bad for a first day.
Home, however, is another matter. If she’s not with me, she’s shrieking and destroying whatever barrier I have placed in her path. She’s crated at the moment and very vocal about being unhappy. We’re going to have to work on this.
She is definitely a crocodile, as predicted. My friend Mark made the mistake of wiggling his toes at her, and I’m afraid he got little sympathy when she bit them. He’d been warned. /laugh/ I told him he would not see this puppy in the next six months without a toy ready at hand. She’s oral, and she’s going to be oral, and I’m just going to have to be prepared to work with that.
But when she’s sleeping in my lap, I can tell she’s already succeeded. Yes, I have lofty goals for her in the future. But my dogs’ number one job is to be family members, companions, and she’s already got that down. 🙂
Laev and Sumo the Fat Cat
here I come!
ooh! a stick! I won it in a game of chase and tug!
the last thing a puppy toy sees….
entering the front door
