A new life...

Here is a picture of Max at about 8 weeks of age! Is he not the most adorable little furball you have ever seen?

Anyways, it is now approaching 5 days with Max and life has definitely changed! Instead of coming home from work and eating and promptly plopping down in front of the TV or computer, we have to take Max out to the backyard for him to do his doody (pun intended). Our daily schedule is centered around housetraining Max (mainly waiting with him in the backyard for him to finish his doody!) and teaching him the rules of the house (no biting, chewing, barking and doodies) and of course, entertaining the little bugger so that he doesn't chew us out of the house! I have seen some other blogs of the list of items that their dogs have chewed up and we hope to not to have to post a similar list in this blog!

Signed up on gocorgi.com and got lots of great advice from very wise corgi owners out there! Every bit helps a lot! Apparently 7 weeks is pretty early and because of that, little Maximus has not learned "bite inhibition" from his siblings and mother yet at this age. That is why he likes to bite so much during the close-up play with him. I have learned to keep a greenie chew toy with me whenever I play up close with him. One of the most useful pieces of advice was to pretend to be a puppy playmate and if he bites, we have to act like a hurt puppy would: basically whine and stop playtime immediately!

It was amazingly fast training Max not to poo/pee in his den. Since the first full day, he hasn't dirtied his den once. However, it has been quite a bit more difficult to train the little bugger that there is a big difference between pooping inside the house and pooping out in the backyard. Nowadays we just walk him out in the backyard, or leave him in the backyard during the times that he should go and that has been effective for the past couple of days.

Unfortunately, he has developed a taste for snails and slugs. Looked online and it didn't seem to be that harmful for him to eat them unless you are in england. Must remember to ask the vet about the consequences of his taste for snails. Hopefully, it is simply nutritional!

This entire first week, my fiance has been getting up at 6am everyday and feeding him and promptly taking him outside to poop and pee. Often, he will poop twice! He gets a treat if he poops in the favorable areas in the dirt out of the high traffic areas! Yesterday morning, however, he began whining and woke us up at 4:30am! Holy cow! It is way too cold to go out there without a fur coat. So I just put him outside in the backyard and went back to bed. Didn't sleep well at all leaving the little guy outside by himself and my fiance had a nightmare about it and brought him back in at 5:30am. He whined loudly for another 5 minutes but then gave up and let us sleep in peace for a short while at least. I got in work a bit late as a result and was rather sleepy all day. Fortunately, he was much better this morning and didn't hear him whine at all by 6am when my fiance got up!

Today, Max is going to his very first vet visit and we are excited because once he is vaccinated, we can take him out and let him socialize with other dogs and see more the lovely city of San Diego aside from out backyard!

Here's a picture of Max's parents... his daddy, Dylan is the red/white on the left and mom, Scarlet is the tricolor on the right. Max will be a very handsome dog when he grows up!