Of mice and men...

A few weeks ago, I went home for lunch to release the puppy into the backyard. I heated up some leftovers and sat in the backyard to eat while Max frolics about! As I was eating, I noticed Max was chewing on something. It sort of looked like a big mushroom or something from a distance. I stopped eating and walked over to have a closer look... it was a mushroom with a tail! Wait! The mushroom had ears too! Crap! It's a mouse! Max was chomping on a field mouse! I quickly told Max to "drop it!" as we were taught in Puppy Obedience class. Usually, this works for almost everything. Max just looked at me and continued munching! This will not do. I went and grabbed his favorite treats and came back and said "drop it!" repeatedly with the treats in my hand. This is usually quite effective, but not this time. He seems to have a treat far superior than anything I could offer him. Ok, so he won't drop it... let's try "Come here boy! Come here Max! Touch!" ("touch" is the command for the puppy to come running and touch your hand with his nose). He just looked at me again and continued munching. Ok, can't let him eat this mouse. Don't know where it has been. The mouse could've died from the plague for all I know. Could've been dead for days. No idea. Have to take the mouse! Time to rush for the mouse! So I made a move to grab a hold of the puppy! Max is pretty fast and he quickly dodges my grasp! He is continues to munch on the mouse as I am chasing him about the yard! I finally corner him and I am able to grab him! He still won't respond to verbal commands! I am hesitant to touch the mouse! It could be infectious! So I turn the puppy upside down holding him near his hind legs and I am trying to shake the mouse out of him! He continues munching! Arrggghhh!!! I try to choke the mouse out of him as I am shaking him upside down! He still won't let it go!!! Ok, time is running out! Have resorted to just prying his jaws open and grabbing the mouse with my bare hands! I turn the puppy right side up and pry his jaws open.... the mouse is gone!!! Noooooooooooo!!!! Arrrggghhhhh!!!!

That's ok. Don't panic. May need to get Max to vomit up the mouse. I remember reading that there is something to can feed a dog to get him to vomit. Need to get the laptop quickly. I look it up... can use hydrogen peroxide! Can't find it! Have to call fiance at her work to ask her where it is! She says call the vet to see what to do! Vet says just to watch him or bring him in so they can watch him. He said to make sure that Max doesn't vomit, diarrhea, convulses, or is lethargic. Will cost a lot of money to have the vet watch him or I can take him with me back to work. But I work at a networking company so it would be very bad for him to chew on network cables and he would be a major distraction. He has already chewed the cable of the AC adapter for the laptop and that was $50 to replace! Or, we can gamble and assume he'll be ok... fiance will come home from work in a couple of hours anyways. Ok, gambing with puppy's life that his mouse was not seriously toxic in some way and the mouse did not die from rat poison. He looks perfectly fine right now. Put Max in his crate and went back to work.

When fiance came home, Max seemed perfectly fine. For the rest of the night, he seemed perfectly normal. However, when I returned at lunch time the next day, Max had diarrhea and it was everywhere in his crate. I'll spare the details on how the cleaning turned out, but it is safe to say, it was not pretty and it was definitely not fun!

It has been over 3 weeks since that horrible day and Max has seen the vet twice and is doing fine and is at about 14 lbs in weight now. I guess having our first puppy eat his first prized mouse was not that bad. I guess we can be very overprotective parents as well.

At my signal, unleash hell...

Max is getting to be pretty big puppy! Max is now probably around 12 lbs and although he's not getting much taller, he is getting to be very long and stout! Unfortunately, we haven't taken any recent pictures of Max to show off but I do have an older picture of Max when he was about 8 and half weeks old. This picture was posted on the daily puppy and someone commented on how much he liked this picture and said, "Ha! Look at him hiding behind the buckets in that 4th pic down! Waiting to attack with cuteness! 'At my signal, unleash hell.' "

Buried treasure...

So recently, we have been going to the local grocery stores and asking the butcher for dog bones. They usually point us to the big beef femur bones that many folks use for soup. These bones are fairly well priced since it is a lot of marrow and fat and little meat. We were very excited to bring the bone back home to Max since all Max generally eats is Science Diet Puppy food and we were eagerly anticipating how much Max would love the bone.

Sure enough, as soon as we set down the bones in a bowl, Max was at like a wolf on his prey! Keep in mind this is no little milkbone. This is a Beef femur bone from a big adult cow! This bone is as big as Max's head! Well, Max gnawed away at the bone... and gnawed some more... and gnawed on it some more. He must've been gnawing for hours and he would never seem to tire out!

Anyways, that's not the end of the story. So after Max finally tired of the bone, he would typically just leave it wherever he was last gnawing on it... be it the grass or near some bushes or under a chair. He never leaves the bone in the bowl anymore... it is apparently much easier to gnaw with both paws on this bone in a patch of dirt somewhere. Anyways, so we could usually come back a couple hours later and put the bone back in the bowl and refridgerate it for the next day if the bone was still in good shape.

Recently though, his bones have been disappearing. We would leave him out in the backyard gnawing on it and when we went back there to look for the bone to either throw it away or refridgerate it, it would be gone without a trace! Then later than night, we would let Max out back to do his doody and he seemed more preoccupied back there than usual. He was digging in some dirt in the corner of the yard! He was digging up his bone! What's worse, after he dug up his rotting, soil encrusted bone, he would continue gnawing on it! Ewww!!!

Anyways, to Max's disappointment, that bone quickly found its way to the garbage bin. Perhaps we should put a little minifridge in the backyard and teach the little rascal how to use it!

The talented Mr. Maximus...

Last week, my fiance's sister and boyfriend visited during their spring breaks and within a week, Max learned how to shake paws and roll-over on command! Max will even go pee on command and go poo on command when is poo available! Compared to other puppies in Max's puppy training class, Max is way ahead of the curve! Max may be small and quite a whiner, but he is definitely an over-achieving whiner!

Shown are three more awesome shots of Max taken by my friend Connie at the track. The last shot of Max sprawled out in napping ectasy was taken by yours truly! The hard part was tiptoeing around without waking him up!

Max's new look...

With Max's ears up, he sports a whole new look... actually, Max sports all kinds of new looks... to the right we have his usual calm sitting demeanor.

The picture below demonstrates the expressiveness of his ears! Not sure what was going on to cause this fearful expression. I have noticed that he often pulls his ear down when he approaches strangers or other dogs in a submissive, shy, but friendly manner... hopefully, all those combined adjectives make sense. I think basically he loves to meet new people and dogs... especially kids. However, he also gets a bit shy and nervous when meeting strange new people and pretty much all dogs.

The way he pulls his ears down is also something he does when he is running really fast! It is really cute! His ears are so big now that he often catch the wind and so when he's running, he'll pull them down to provide him with an aerodynamic head! It actually makes him look like he is running 90 MPH!

We took Max to a track this weekend at a local university and met up with a couple of friends there and we all ran around the track in a group and Max followed running along! He is definitely a speedy little guy and when he really wants to run fast, he kind of runs like a bunny!

These very professional looking photos were taken at the track by my old friend Connie! Thanks Connie!

The day the ear stood up...

Here are pictures taken of Max when his ear stood up and stayed for the first time:

Cuteness on four legs!

Max's ears went up today! It is the cutest thing! Sorry, don't have a picture to post right now! Will post pictures when I can! His left ear went up on Wednesday and then it flopped down again! Yesterday, his left ear went up and stayed up. Today, his other ear went up and is staying up!

It is amazing to me how expressive his ears can be. When he was approaching a Yorkie of his same size at the Vet today and he would pull down his ears and approach the yorky in a submissive manner like he was sneaking up on the yorkie! It was so cute! He seems to be able to control his ears at will rotating them like dish antennas! His ears are so big to in comparison with his head and body... it is quite batty if you ask me!

Recently Max has been really lazy when it comes to walks. For the past week and a half, attempts to walk him have mostly been extremely short and aggravating. It has been very warm and sunny lately in San Diego and often as soon as we hit the front yard or driveway, Max just flops down on his side and rolls around in the sun. Attempts to get him walk him even a few houses down the block tend to be slow and require too many treats. Have to figure out why he doesn't want to take walks around the block anymore. Max will usually follow very well when there is a pack of us moving together... due to the wolf pack mentality of all dogs.

I was able to get Max to walk last night just because when we went out we saw a couple of other neighborhood dog owners with their dogs, Charley (dark and furry,... don't remember his breed) and Benny (a white fluffy Westie) and whenever Max sees kids or other dogs, he shoots like a guided missile straight toward them! Max is usually so aggressive with meeting other dogs that the other dogs typically retreat from Max's onslaught of friendliness! Although when other dogs approach Max, Max usually becomes very submissive. Go figure.

He does love to go hiking though. There are lots of dirt trails in the hills behind our house and as soon as we hit the trails, Max is usually quite active and follows us wherever we go,... stopping only when we stop. One of Max's favorite is running up the hills! He loves it and will often run up ahead as fast as he can! We should take him to a real mountain some time! It would be great exercise for all of us!

Max weighed in at 7.5lbs today at the vet! Max was about 5 lbs when he was about 8 weeks old. We discovered that we have been underfeeding our poor little puppy and he wasn't growing as much as he should have been. We've drastically bumped up the amount of food we feed him and he has been growing a lot within the past week! At the beginning of the week, he was 6 lbs! Poor little Max, we felt really terrible to learn that he had been so hungry and not growing as much as he should. It is really hard to gauge how much to feed your puppy because Max, and Corgis in general, are voracious eaters and will eat until they can hardly walk anymore! Everybody says not to overfeed your dog and not to listen to what it says on the dog food bag because they are out to sell more dog food! But Max has a lot of growing to do so he is going to eat extra good for a pretty long while!

Luckily, Max looks very healthy and still oh so cute! The vet agrees Max looks perfectly healthy too and doesn't think being undersized is a major concern as long as he looks and acts healthy! Regardless, pretty much everybody agrees Max is the definition of cuteness on four legs!