This goofy Shep of ours has some strange habits. The one that amuses me the most is that often, when we're throwing a ball for him, down the long hall where the bedrooms are, he comes back to the living room, put his ball near the sofa, and push it under with his paw. He simply loves it when somebody fishes under the sofa to get his ball [which can be tricky, considering that he lays down next to the sofa and puts his paw under to 'help'!], and it's even better when somebody needs to move the sofa to get the ball out! High excitement for D.J.!! This morning I really disconcerted him by moving the sofa forward slightly on one side so that I could plug my laptop in, as the plug is behind the sofa. He spent sometime afterwards sniffing and whining around the sofa, looking for the ball that I must have gotten out!

 

Our new German Shepherd cross, 10 months old, is as gentle as a lamb. A lamb whose long, sharp teeth sometimes get in the way when playing because he's overexcited, a lamb who gets terribly riled up when he sees birds flying, and a lamb who can lick all your makeup off before you leave for work. I can now tell the customers at the optical shop where I work that our anti-glare coating is so smudge-resistant that dog lick wipes off of it easily with a soft cloth and that no lens spray is needed. Experience is everything in my job!

Somedays, walking D.J. is like wrestling an alligator. Today there's both a full moon and the wind is up, high, howling, and cold, and getting him to heel was almost impossible. He sniffed every blade of grass, chased every bird and every squirrel, howled at every passer-by, and generally made me feel like I owned the worst-trained dog in Canada if not the entire continent. 

Somedays I realize how far D.J. has come along in the not-quite two weeks since we acquired him. Yesterday my nine-year old daughter and I walked down to the local supermarket.  Aislinn went into the store to acquire lunch meat and dishwasher tablets while I waited outside with the dog. He looked mournfully at Aislinn's retreating form, then settled down to wait with me. For a dog who used to bark at every moving vehicle, every human being and every strange noise, he had come a long way. D.J. sat with me, firmly on his bottom, and watched, with interest, the comings and goings of the cars, people, and shopping carts of the grocery store, and of the people across the street at the gas station. The shopping carts freaked him out a little, and his ears went back.  After a couple of minutes of sitting still and watching the world go by, D.J. lay down on the supermarket walkway in a position where he could still watch comings and goings and rested there until Aislinn came out. I was so proud of him. Our dog, obeying!

D.J. loves the smell of cheese and the smell of chocolate.  We slip him the occasional bite of cheese, but none of chocolate - some show on the Disney network - the one where the big city girl ends up working in a vet's office or some such thing - showed me that chocolate is poisonous for dogs. He loves the tennis ball he's currently playing with/devouring, games of tug of war, and licking people until they are soggy. What he especially likes is when the whole family is home; all five of us under the same roof, then all of the humans whom he is in charge of are safe and he can keep an eye on us. And we on him.