Congratulations Max!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

April 14, 2007

Max graduated from puppy school today!!

He can now sit, stay, give us his paw, and roll over.

Max took a final exam to pass puppy school. There were a few stations. At each station, Max had to do something specific ie. sit.

Then all the puppies played musical chairs... well, the adults could only sit down after their dogs sat down. Max did not win the largest treat. He wouldn't move and the music had to be restarted a few times for him. Congratulations Max!!!!


You can see Max's first girlfriend, Molly, in the picture above.
They like to cuddle and play together. Molly is a
bloodhound and the only puppy that Max is quite fond of.



It's Max and his golden retriever friend, Bentley!

In Dog We Trust...

Since the day we got Max, we have not allowed Max to come upstairs where it is fully carpeted and where all the bedrooms are. The lower level of our house is fully tiled with a few rugs of relatively low value. Our reasons were simple, it is easier to clean pee and poo from tile than from carpet. However, because Max was never allowed upstairs, being the upstairs area was like being in nirvana to Max! There is not another place he would rather be. To Max, being upstairs was fun and exciting and living the high life! Occasionally, Max would be a bad puppy and run up the stairs and run around in circles barking like a rebelious mad Max! We would quickly gather him up, scold him and take him downstairs.

But for the past several weeks, Max has not had an accident anywhere inside the house. We had stuck to his crate training schedule like a school master of a catholic school. We always take Max out back after naps, in the mornings, after eating and after playing... we basically take him out the time. We would always reward him with a treat for peeing outside on command. After sticking to that strict housetraining schedule for months and having to cleaning up many "mistakes" early on, we were finally getting paid off! Our puppy was finally able to hold his water and we could finally trust the puppy!

So one day, Max was particularly stinky from a hike earlier in the day. Bath time! Usually we carry Max upstairs to the bath tub for his bath. However this time, we let Max run upstairs behind us and he was loving it! He was so happy to be upstairs running around freely, it was just achingly cute! Plus, Max was such a good puppy for being mistake free for so many weeks, Max deserved some slack in the "no upstairs" rule. That night after his bath, we let Max up onto our bed to play with him as we were preparing for bed. He was having quite a ball romping around the tangle of blankets and sheets. It is quite fun and adorable.

As I was brushing my teeth, I saw Max's body take a bent forward posture that I have seen many times in the backyard. It was a posture I knew well. No, I thought, he couldn't have. I stepped closer to the bed. But he knows better, I was thinking, he couldn't have. I took another step closer. Yep, he sure did. I looked into the tumble of blankets to see a healthy yellow pool of pee seeping in. Nooooooo!!! Not in the bed!!!! Of all places, not where we sleep!!! Arrggghhh!!!

Moral of the story: Never trust a puppy!

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!