Legs Eleven

I just walked outside to find Riot and Sonic lying together on the grass systematically shredding a pillow that they stole out of the garage! Talk about partners in crime...As annoyed as I am that they destroyed a pillow (that doesn't actually belong to me) the way they were lying together on the grass totally focused on the job at hand (shredding said pillow) I couldn't find it in me to get cross.

This week we started working on stands and sit stays. Lets face it, sits and downs get a bit boring after a while. However he does do them very well! At training we mucked around on the table. Mainly tug of war and getting him to offer behaviours while on the table. I've been doing a little bit of flat work too which he is really enjoying. I'm very impressed with how he stays on the side I want him on. He also does very good 'S' shapes but I think that may be a bit accidental! But he does seem very clued in to reading my body language considering that I haven't really done all that much flat work with him thus far. Next week I think we'll just continue with the stands and sit stays as they still need rather a lot of work.

Now that Sonic's legs are reaching gazelle length he is learning all the really cool things he can do with the extra height advantage. He will spend as long as it takes removing every single toy from the top of his crate only to leave them forgotten on the floor. He still has to leap about a bit to get the ones right in the middle but his perserverance is quite impressive for one so young. He has also decided that throwing yourself bodily at peoples heads is fabulous fun. He started off just doing to me during our training sessions but apparently anyone is fair game. My parents had to be warned when they arrived today to ensure that they were prepared for the flying projectile. Biggest problem is he does it so unexpectedly. He'll be sitting there looking at you quite innocently and then next thing you know he just launches himself at you. Luckily Sonic actually only drew blood once when enthusiastically chewing on my dad's hand!

He can be total extremes personalities wise at the moment. Some evening he's really mellow and is happy to settle down with the other dogs. Other evenings he turns into a shrieking psycho and I end up having to evict him from the house for the sake of the sanity of the rest of the household. Those evenings seem to be when he's overtired though and thankfully not all the time. Otherwise the rest of us may have moved out by now...