19 weeks old, and 11 weeks in!

[Kevin Poole, Penny & Ozzy]

Are weeks getting shorter?

Hi everyone. So here we are again, Penny had her second obedience class last night. Jeri came with me this time (I think she just wanted to see if I was exaggerating about how well behaved Penny was last week...shhhh!. That's between you and me). Penny was awesome, breezed through what we had learned last week like a pro, and the other two dogs were just as spazzy as they were previously. Had an interesting lesson this week about walking your dog on the leash. The way I've been taught in the past, was when your dog pulled, then you give the leash a yank, say "No pull" or whatever. But not now. The theory is, you have your dog on a 6' leash, which I do anyway, and you let them pull, when they get to the maximum length of the lead, and therefore start to pull, you stop in your tracks, say nothing and wait. Then when the dog relaxes a little, you say "Good dog!" and carry on walking until they pull again, and so on, theory being they'd rather be walking with you than not at all. We practiced this down the aisles of PetSmart, and it kinda worked OK, except there's way too many distractions with people, other dogs, doggy treat smells etc. But the instructor said Penny did well, so I put it into practice this morning. We were told it might take us forever to go anywhere, but to persevere and the rewards will come. My big concern was that I would look a complete dick in front of the neighbors, but I soon shook that off with the thought "F*** 'em! This is for Penny and me, not them".

Off we set, and I let her have full play with the leash, which she proceeded to trip over and grab with her mouth and shake it. So I stopped, unwound it from her legs, and shortened it to about 4' long, and off we set again. Of course she pulled (She's never pulled hard, but does put strongish tension on the leash), I stopped, and after about 5 to 10 seconds she relaxed, I said "Good girl!" and off we went again. Three steps later I stopped again, she then realized we weren't going anywhere and sat down. Off we went again, there was a little girl stood down the street, I'm assuming waiting for a bus or a lift, and Penny wanted to go to her. Every time she pulled I stopped, she sat down and we set off again. The girl probably thought we looked weird and she crossed the road out of our way, and every time Penny made a move to go to her I stopped and she'd sit down. It took us a while to do our usual morning mile walk, about 40 minutes I think, but it was a lot easier than yanking her back, and eventually she was walking beside me quite happily and looking up at me, with the leash dangling between us. So I'm impressed with that, it's not hard to do, and you do get moments of huge reward. We'll definitely be working on that all the time in the future. Hopefully when she's not pulling we can go for longer walks.

Last Friday we took Penny to doggy day care. We want her to socialize with other dogs and get used to not being with us 24/7. This place called Woof World have an initial evaluation, they keep your dog for 4 hours and slowly introduce it to the other dogs during that time, it cost $10, good value! Jeri was traumatized when we left, thinking Penny wasn't going to have a good time. But we went off and did some shopping, visited Jeri's mom and went back to pick her up at the end of the 4 hours. When we walked in, I leaned over the fence of the compound, there were about 8 other dogs there, and when they saw me, they all rushed towards me, except Penny. The other dogs jumped up at the fence, squeaking and barking, and Penny was just laid on her tummy, front legs stretched out in front of her looking at me, not sulking, she looked happy to see me, but wasn't going to lower herself to spaz out like the other dogs. The lady in charge said she did really well, teamed up with a Cocker Spaniel, who when he first came up to Penny he rolled over on his back, and then so did Penny...talk about being submissive! Apparently she didn't play much but was quite content to just mooch around and watch the others. I'm good with that. When we got her home, she crashed out for over 4 hours!

Regular readers might remember the photos of Penny looking in through the window asking to come in. To do that she stood on one of our patio chairs. The other evening I went to check where she was, she was not on the chair, but the patio table, taking a stroll around the umbrella. BOY! Did I want to take a photo, but I had to chastise her for that, which is difficult when your suppressing a laugh. I've included a photo of the table here, try and imagine what I saw!

All those tiles are loose, can you imagine what a mess and horrendous noise that would make if it all went south?

Well Penny and Abby seem to be friends now, Penny got up on the cats' sofa the other morning (Can you believe we have furniture that are only there for the animals?), she went to sleep and Bunny climbed up into her usual position and went to sleep also, see below:

Considering Penny has a retriever lineage, she's pretty good at herding too, our 3 cats are very rarely in the same place at the same time, but thanks to Penny, I took this photo so that you can put a cat's face to the names I mention:

And I took this one to show how thankful we are that Penny is not yet tall enough to reach the top of the cat tree...hee hee!:

Last Sunday, Jeri, Penny and I had a very pleasant walk by the banks of the local river.

Penny loved the new sniffs and the occasional dip in the water:

Our youngest cat Potsy had a nice roll on the carpet the other day, I think she thought Penny was outside, but I could be wrong:

And in case any of you are wondering what those two lumps are behind Penny, they are her feet, see below, and she still hasn't chewed any of my shoes:

On Sunday evening, Penny jumped up beside my recliner, and we decided that as some of fur is starting to matt, maybe she needs a haircut:

That said, we found a groomer here in town, such a small town but we do have a groomer, and more unusually a shop that sells glass pipes and bongs...how odd is that? Anyway, come Tuesday lunchtime, she was back at home looking like this:

We're very pleased with the result, her fur feels like cashmere, soooo soft! Love her feet too!

Penny is now teething....A LOT...her gums are so pink, she's got teeth coming up everywhere, (That's everywhere in her mouth, anywhere else would be sooo weird), and they are causing her some distress, so today we rubbed some Orajel on her gums....have you ever seen a dog trying to run away from it's mouth?....very funny. Seems to have helped though.

That's it for this week folks, until next week, see ya
Kevin and Penny

[F, Calla & Luca]

I see that you have mastered the "who cares what they think" attitude quite well, which I think is pretty vital in order to get on with your life, assuming you're not doing anything illegal, immoral etc. Speaking of which, are you cats criminals? I was wondering since they all have aliases.Great pictures!!!