Dionne meets Darby!

Dionne had a thrilling day. She got to meet and play with Aunt Darby.

I didn't get to witness this momentous event, but Steve did. Steve's a good friend and professional associate of Joe Dunne, who along with his wife Kerri, adopted our last CCI puppy, Darby, when CCI decided she wasn't cut out for a life in the service. So when Steve had to go to Joe's today to discuss a business matter, he naturally took Dionne with him.

"They got along famously," he reported when they returned, hours later. "Dionne finally met someone who thinks like her. The minute we arrived, Dionne went for Darby -- jumped up and put her paws on Darby's neck and head. The Puppy Attack. Darby wagged her tail and was totally down with that."

Joe and Kerri have a fence around their lap pool, creating a space that's perfect for two mischievous dogs. Safely confined within it, they wrestled. They ran each other around. At one point, Dionne started barking insistently, but Steve found it was only a challenge to play more. He heard no screams or snarls.

Darby, a passionate swimmer, took a water break from time to time, but Dionne
 apparently wasn't tempted to follow suit. 

He says when they finally left, after several hours, he secured Dionne in the kennel in the back of the van, and as they pulled away from the Dunnes' house, she cried.

A good class

If it sounds like I'm always complaining about Dionne's misbehavior, that's not my intention. It's simply easy to write about the more challenging experiences; they stand out. It's less interesting to record the countless times that petting this puppy makes my oxytocin levels sore, or she blows us away with her cuteness.

But last night she actually had me dreaming about her graduation (a year and a half down the road, if she makes it.) Her behavior in puppy class made me think: "This dog IS going to make it."

To our surprise, we found only one other puppy when we arrived. No others showed up. The other classmate was almost exactly Dionne's age and also female -- only she was the first CCI pup being raised by her caretaker, whereas Dionne is our fifth.

Most of the time, Steve and I are pretty focused on our myriad mistakes. But last night was one of those rare times when I was aware of how much we've learned about dog-handling over the past 8 years. The  contrast between Dionne and the other pup was stark. Walking around the room on leash, Dionne's eyes were glued on me. She sat crisply. She surprised me by going into a Down position without being lured. She Stayed for much longer than I thought she would.

When I mentioned to our teacher, Bob Smith, that we could use some review in how to teach the Wait command (which we had not introduced to Dionne), he took her leash and demonstrated it. When you tell the dog to Wait just before reaching a doorway, it's supposed to stop and let you to go through first, waiting until it gets permission to proceed. After just a few passes with Bob's instruction, Dionne clearly got it.

"She's really doing well," he commented, more than once. "You guys have a great relationship with her. You're handling her very well."

He even exclaimed over her beauty. ("She could be in a dog show, she's so pretty!") The other pup was having a bad night. Her puppy-raiser had forgotten to bring her halter, so that was making it hard to control her. The puppy veered off and straggled around her handler's legs. She lunged at Dionne and barked at her. She peed in the middle of the classroom.

It reminded me of a time, almost lost in the mists of memory, when Steve and I were that inexperienced. We're still far, far from great. We still screw up a lot. But an experience like last night makes me feel there's hope for both Dionne and for us.

Crystal clear

It was 2:45 a.m. when Dionne woke us up this morning, yipping urgently. Steve has been princely at such times, and once again he hauled himself out of bed, leashed her, hustled her out into the cold and watched her pee. We both felt appalled.  She usually sleeps from around 10 to 5 or 6 a.m. This aberration made me worry that I probably should do what Dr. Shatila told me to do last week -- namely bring her back for a follow-up urinalysis. Maybe there really was something wrong with her, I fretted as I tossed and turned, trying to get back to sleep. Maybe the high acidity and struvite crystals that he saw in her urine last week were irritating her so much it awakened her. So first thing this morning, I made an appointment to bring her back for the recheck.

Forty-four dollars poorer, I can report that Dionne's pee was clearer than springwater. No microscopic crystals of any sort. A pH level of 6.5 -- which the vet says is exactly what it should be.

This still leaves the question of why she chose to wake us up in the middle of the night. Our explanation du jour: she's still a baby, and they're not perfectly consistent.

Big dogs and little dogs

Here Dionne is acting like a big old dog.
Hanging out and chilling with Tucker.
(But she's faking it.  She's still very much a puppy.)

I've been giving some thought to the difference between puppies and big dogs. I think it's more profound than the latter having learned specific things that the former don't yet know -- e.g. not to urinate or defecate in the house, not to chew on things etc. It seems to me that the two behave in fundamentally different ways. All the big dogs that I know spend most of their time either sleeping or hanging out. Sure, they're happy to get up and do stuff with you when you invite them --  to go for a walk, say, or play ball. Sometimes they actively solicit affection or ball-playing. But they've somehow internalized the knowledge that their main role in life is to... chill. It makes them easy to live with.

Puppies are different. (And it's possible that what I'm going to say might not apply to other breeds of puppies. What I know are the labradors and goldens and mixes of the two.) They spend part of their days sleeping. But when they're not asleep, they display a relentless, questing curiosity -- moving from one thing to another and usually acting inappropriately as they go along.

Because it's Sunday, I thought I would give myself the assignment of following Dionne around for a while, trying to document how inventive she can be about spending her time. I let her out on the patio, where she helped herself to a drink of water, then she wandered down to the three giant flowerpots next to the pool. Yesterday's rain had caused the saucers that they sit in to fill with water, and this fascinated her. She circled and circled each pot, smelling the rainwater and every now and then trying to drink some of it.

She moved away. Picked up a leaf and chewed it. Moved into an adjoining flowerbed and chewed for a minute on one of the plants. She spotted a root and dug it up, then rocketed with it in her mouth down to the lower yard. Still holding it, she peed, then dropped it to snorfle around in the pile of leaves under the avocado tree.

I called her into the house, where her investigations continued. She chewed on the metal door of the small kennel that we just moved into the living room. She jumped up on the fireplace hearth and stuck her nose in the sand around the grate.

It goes on like this, sometimes with her picking up and playing with her dedicated toys, but more often not. Frankly, there's a part of me that finds it hugely charming -- all that spunky curiosity on display. I feel bad constraining it; but it's also a big pain to try to monitor it. Soon enough, we confine her in her kennel or the exercise pen.

Spending time in the kennel also is part of the CCI pup's training. It gives them less opportunity to be rewarded for doing things that aren't acceptable. I guess it probably helps them on their transition to being a big old chiller dog. Simultaneously, I find a caged puppy to be both a sad thing -- and a great relief.

Pipedream

Wish I could train Dionne to do THIS:

Menagerie a trois

Steve returned from his business trip Thursday night, and it's a huge relief to no longer be a single parent to Dionne. But while he was gone, necessity led me to a Eureka moment.

Although Steve and I sometimes walk the dogs together, I also for years have enjoyed walking alone with them to my favorite coffeehouse for my morning caffeine fix. It's about 10 minutes from our house, and I've taken both dogs because I simply haven't been able to bear to leave Tucker behind. It would break his heart. But I've done it knowing it was not optimal, from a puppy-training perspective. Walking side by Tucker's side, the puppies often harass him or bite his leash, and when they surge ahead, it's harder to correct them than it is when I'm walking the pup alone.

This time, however, because of Becca's recent reminder that the CCI pups must be accustomed to walk on either the right or the left side, it dawned on me that I could have Dionne on my right and Tucker on my left (something that never seemed possible before because I always walked both dogs on the left.)  To my astonishment, Dionne complied with this arrangement, never even attempting to circle around and molest him.

I'm thrilled by this turn of events. I feel like the three of us can go to coffee without breaking any training rules.

For all her occasional wildness and puppy mischief, Dionne continues to be the best walker we've EVER had.

In the doghouse

Not a great day.  Dionne attacked the plant outside Steve's office, ripped out the irrigation hose and the clip for it, and tried to eat that.  Before dinner she peed on the steps in Steve's office. Worst of all was what happened when I inadvertently left a bowl of rice (intended for our dinner) on top of her kennel for a few minutes.

She leapt up to snatch the bowl, knocked it off, shattering it and scattering the contents.

Her reward: immediate imprisonment (as shown here.)

We all need to do better tomorrow.

Not growing

Dr. Shatila called first thing this morning to report that no bacteria grew from the urine that was collected yesterday. That's good news; it means Dionne has no bacterial infection that might explain her symptoms yesterday. (If the bacteria didn't grow, Dionne certainly has. She weighed in yesterday at 29 pounds, 6 ounces -- a full pound more than last week, when she got her third set of shots.)

The weird thing is that her UTI symptoms seemed to disappear overnight. She woke me at 5:30 a.m., asking to go out, but that's pretty normal. On our walk this morning, she didn't stop every 5 minutes to pee. She didn't appear to strain.

Dr. S still was concerned about the large number of "struvite crystals" he saw in the specimen yesterday, and he said the pH balance was off. So he's asked me to bring her in Friday for another urinalysis.

I said I would, but I'm not real happy about taking an asymptomatic dog in for more testing. For one thing, it's an hour or two out of my day, and a $40 fee (at least, assuming he doesn't also charge for the another office visit.). And if she's still got crystals... so what?

In the meantime, Dionne was even peppier today than usual. She seemed particularly entranced by opportunities to seize various cloth items around the house: dish towels, my sweaters (left lying around), sofa throws.  Soon she and I will depart for the airport to pick up Steve. That'll make her stay up a bit later than usual; maybe we can all sleep in?

Unpleasant Trouble In-the-house

That's what a UTI (aka a Urinary Tract Infection) is in my mind. It became clear to me that Dionne was developing one somewhere in the mists of last night. She's had TWO peeing accidents during the day, but I'd blamed both on handler error (as they may well have been.) When I took her out for the final pee of the night (around 9), she stayed in a squatting position for what seemed like a strangely long time.

But I didn't put it together. Not even when she woke at 11:45 p.m., crying to go out (something she has not done since the night or two after we got her.) Only when she woke me AGAIN at 3 a.m. -- and then squatted for a long, long, long time in the cold dark back yard, did the tumblers fall into place.

Steve and I have seen this kind of behavior before -- in Darby, when we first got her from CCI (as I recorded in this blog). So I knew what I had to do. First -- try to collect some of the urine, as vets always insist they must have it. When Tucker and Dionne and I set off on a long walk up the hill first thing this morning, I took a clean plastic container with me. But though Dionne stopped and squatted 8 times during that 40-minute outing, I only caught about a teaspoon, she was peeing so little each time (and doing it so quickly).

Steve, it should be noted, is out of town at the moment (the man does have great timing.) I called the veterinary clinic shortly after 8, only to learn that our regular doctor there was out of town AND they had no appointments for today. I then called our wise and experienced puppy mentor, LeAnn Buchanan, who urged me to call her vet, Dr. Hani Shatila. Steve and I have taken our pups to him upon occasion and would rely upon him all the time, if his office weren't almost 30 minutes from our house (as opposed to the 5 minutes it takes to get to Dr. Scoggin's place). Desperate, I did call Hani's office and was delighted to score a 9:30 appointment.

It must be noted that Dionne isn't acting very sick.  She was racing around energetically first thing, and she looked fine in the office. But a quick urinalysis showed many white cells in her urine, according to Hani, and the suggestion of a staph infection. He said it was essential to culture the cells to better identify the cause of the infection -- and thus choose the best antibiotic for treating it. This meant we had to depart with no medicine, and Dionne and I will have to return tomorrow morning.

All of which has made me... not a very happy camper. I have to go to my book group tonight and thus must leave Dionne at home in the exceedingly loose care of Elliot (our 23-year-old so). When I get home, I also look forward to a night of multiple trips out into the cold and dark.

Dionne probably isn't having the greatest time either.  She did like Hani's office, though, where there's a flat-screen TV mounted at dog's-eye level playing Dog TV.

THAT was cool.

Excavations in progress

Dionne has discovered digging. Of course, if we catch her in the act, we order her to stop. But we've begun allowing her periodic moments of freedom in the backyard -- and what you see in these photos is our reward for letting our guard down.

Steve points out that female dogs dig burrows in the wild. I've also read about ancient dogs who buried excess food to guard and preserve it.

But I suspect there's something simpler at work here --  a youngster's joyful discovery that it can change the world around it. When she digs, I think Dionne has a lot in common with the toddler who splashes in her bath. "Hey -- I use my hands/paws and this stuff goes flying up into the air! Wheeee!!!"

She pauses in her digging, and dirt encrusts her snout, her paws, her belly. The only good thing is that it magically falls off her, within a minute or two. We call her Teflon Dog. (Don't ask us where the dirt goes; we don't want to think out that.)

She looks wet here, because I sprayed her face with the garden hose (playing with her). But even so, the dirt falls off within minutes. 

Scary stuff

When Dionne was tiny (6 weeks ago), she went through that brief (less than 2-week-long) phase when she thought the stairs in our house were too scary to descend. Now she rockets up and down them all at a speed that's almost scary to watch. But stairs with open treads -- that's another story.

She freezes in her tracks, as seen here, and mulishly refuses to budge. Clearly she can see the drop-off, and the legacy of her  retriever ancestors who were afraid of heights -- and lived to pass on their genes -- are screaming at her: "Stop! Stop! This is dangerous!!!"

We've seen this reaction before in other CCI puppies, and like them, Dionne will almost certainly get over it. We're confident.

At the moment, the only place we commonly encounter stairs with open treads is in our friend Alberto's building, where we usually gather with friends on Friday nights for a potluck meal and a movie. Albie kindly welcomes Dionne and her little kennel.

She's happy to take the elevator to and from his condo on the third floor, thank you very much.

Yummy!

Dionne's a very intellectual puppy.  She devours the New Yorker...

Snatched

Steve was distraught.  Here's what he said happened.  "She snatched one of my garden clogs and ran out the door with it!" It took him a minute to run out after Dionne, at which point he found her clogless. I looked everywhere for it," he insisted. "It's GONE!!!"                        Clearly he had visions of her burying it or it disappearing into a black hole, though maybe that black hole comment was a reference to Dionne; he was muttering, darkly. Things have vanished on occasion in the garden over the years, and Steve can't imagine living without his garden clogs. But the light was fading, and one thing I knew to a certainty was that the clog was out there somewhere. 

Where I found it

Indeed in this morning's light, I located it, upside down, under our little patch of citrus trees.  Steve was relieved, but we both know it's not the last item that will be kidnapped. Not when somebody in the household thinks keep-away is one of the funnest games a puppy can play. 

The wages of garbagenarianism

We knew it had to happen sooner or later.  We've never had a puppy that didn't barf up garbage. Yesterday Dionne joined the club.

This occurred in Steve's office around mid-afternoon. As he described it to me, Dionne was out of her kennel, sitting on the concrete stairs leading down from the landing and looking "rather green," in Steve's words. That's an odd way to put it; Dionne can no more look green than I can look lavendar; she's coal black. But what he meant was that something about her posture suggested queasiness. Indeed a moment later, she trotted over to Mr. Tucker's bed and vomited up this ripe deposit.

Tucker looked appalled. Steve and I were disgusted, though once again it's as much our fault as hers.  Or maybe mostly Steve's fault this time. Earlier in the day, he'd been down in the lower yard, repairing the back fence. Dionne was with him, off leash, and he wasn't paying the closest attention to her. At a certain point, he noticed she was chewing on an avocado seed. It must have come from our avocado tree; who got the seed out of the avocado isn't clear (but probably one of the possums that regularly invade.) Where Steve blew it was in not springing up to extract the avocado seed remnants from Dionne's maw. He says he figured the seed was "organic."

Experience with puppies put some starch in our response. To allow her irritated gut to recovery, we fed her no dinner and prepared plain rice for her breakfast. (We have bad memories of being awakened at 1 in the morning by a retching pup.) In what I think was rather overkill, Steve also hectored her for the rest of the evening, as she looked at us from her kennel, wondering why she was confined with no dinner. "Barfers don't get to be free," Steve told her, contemptuously. "A barfer's life is not a happy one."

This morning's breakfast.  

Note the telltale rice grain.

Lest anyone worry, she's fine now. Wolfed down her puppy chow at lunchtime and dinner today, and hasn't so much as burped. But there's so much to learn. ("I must not eat dirt. Must not eat poop.  Must not eat avocado seeds.  Must not eat palm tree seeds. Etc. Etc. Etc.")

Strolling toward ambidextrousness

Long ago, all but lost in the mists of memory, Steve and I took our first dog, Astra, to our first obedience classes. There it was seared into our minds that the proper position for a dog to walk was on the left side, with the leash end held in the handler's right hand. We always walked Astra in that position, as we walked Tess, and Tootsie, and Pearl. When we got our first CCI pup (Tucker, in early 2005) and started to train him in walking, the command was different: "Let's go!" instead of "Heel." But neither Steve nor I remember being instructed that the dog should walk anywhere other than on the left. 

A pup or two later, I recall another puppy raiser remarking one day in class that CCI wanted us to train the dogs to assume both positions. But I didn't take her seriously, and we don't remember our teacher, Mike Fowler, ever hammering on this point. Since then, however, it's finally begun to sink in: they're serious about this. Old dogs that we are, we have to learn this new trick.
 
Becca Gordon, the local puppy program coordinator, expounded on why in a recent post in the CCI blog:

Many of our graduates have one side that's better able to handle a dog than the other, or are using one hand to drive a power chair so require the dog to be on the other side," she wrote.  "Because we never know which side a graduate will be more comfortable having a dog on, in Professional Training we work every single command, every single day, on both the left and the right.  So, as a trainer, if you get a "one-sided dog", you then have to spend a large amount of your training time just trying to get them comfortable on their "weak" side.

She described how frustrating this could be to the professional trainers:

You start out with the puppy in a nice Let's Go position on your right, and they immediately begin trying to duck behind you to get back to the left. You encourage them back to the right, and half a second later they're ducking behind you again. And again. And again.

Chastened, Steve and I resolved that we would somehow make Dionne be as comfortable on our right as on our left. So as we've begun walking her, we've made an effort not to correct her if she switched between them, as she seemed to enjoy doing. But then a doubt began to niggle: should she be making that choice? That didn't seem right. 

I brought up the question last night in our puppy class, and Bob's reaction was unequivocal: it was BAD to let the puppy direct its own positioning. We had to be the bosses. If we started on one side and she began to cross to the other, behind us, a swift pop on her leash would be appropriate. 

I took her out for a test spin this afternoon, and it proved surprisingly easy to implement this philosophy. I don't know if that was a fluke, or whether it's simply not that hard to do.  

 

GOOD Let's go! 

GOOD Let's go! 

DON'T!!!!!

First night of kindergarten

Although Steve and I took Dionne to a class in December, that was the last session of a Kinderpup course that had been meeting for 3-4 months. Tonight was the first class of the new session, which we'll be in till mid-April. Now it feels like school's really begun. 

Four other dogs were in tonight's group. Two little ones like Dionne were in the care of first-time puppy raisers. Then there were two older females who looked like they might be close to 6 months old. They must have joined the last group when it was well underway; their puppy raisers must feel like it's worth attending the baby class for a while longer. Other little ones are likely to join in along the way. What's amazing about the Kinderpup classes is how dramatically the dogs change in the course of it -- from crazily distracted babies who know nothing to dignified animals who look a lot like civilized full-grown dogs.

Tonight we worked on the most basic of the basics.  Bob had us start by sitting on the floor and cradling our charges. In this position, the pups are on their backs, restrained from wriggling away. It's about the most submissive posture imaginable, and it tends to have a calming effect. Dionne's heart was pounding and her tail, though pinned beneath her, was quivering with excitement. She squeaked and moaned for a long time, but her wild initial reaction to being in the group gradually subsided. 

The format is to go around the circle, with each puppy and handler demonstrating whatever Bob wants to work on. Invariably, we start with "Let's go" (the CCI equivalent of "heel.") Dionne's and my form in this picture is terrible; the leash is taut, which is what we're supposed to be avoiding above all. But it was a momentary lapse. For her age, Dionne walks on the leash better than any puppy we've ever had, and Bob looked impressed (at least until she started chewing on her leash and barking at me.) 

We also practiced "Down"s. Steve and I aren't sure that she truly understands the word, but when we use a beef-jerky tidbit to lure her into position, she responds beautifully and stays down for a while. 

People seize the opportunity to ask questions about issues that are troubling them.  I did that tonight.  Tomorrow I'll report what I asked about and how Bob responded.

Steve's perspective

I've met single people who raise CCI puppies, and I hold them in awe. Like being a parent to a human child, raising a puppy is vastly easier if you have a partner with whom to share all the work. I can't express how grateful I feel when, more often than not, Steve is the one who gets out of bed when (as still happens more often than not) Dionne wakes us shortly before dawn because she's about to burst. These January mornings feel frosty, and I suffer from that much cold. During the day, we try to trade off on who has direct responsibility for her. It can get tedious.

Although I've been writing these blog posts, Steve and I talk about the process of puppy-raising constantly, and this morning he offered to put down some of his recent reflections. Here they are: 

We know little about the process of civilizing children, but we can speak to them in our language by the time they're one or so. We know even less about civilizing puppies.

Tucker is by any measure a civilized dog.  During dinner, he sits or lies at our feet. He rarely begs for food, doesn’t chew the legs of the dining room table or chairs, and doesn’t wander about the house looking for objects to tear apart with his teeth.

Where she has to spend her time during our dinners

Dionne does all these things.  We tried tethering her to my chair, but she chews the leash or puts her paws in my lap or yanks at the tablecloth. So our solution for now is a kennel.  We put it near the table facing us.  She complains at first, wanting to be out with Tucker.  But soon she quiets down, and often goes to sleep after five or ten minutes.

Some day she'll be an angel most of the time. We have faith.

Expecting a puppy to infer that if she behaves badly she will have to stay in a kennel is a stretch. Eventually she will learn good manners and be allowed out with Tucker during our meals. But the process by which she learns such things is a mystery. 

From the trenches

 Yes, sad to say but we're still battling the Elimination Wars.  Or maybe I say, the Pee Wars. During the past week, we had three days with not a single accident. But on four days, "toileting errors" were made (one per day).

I can say this with precision because I've created a log, which lives on the refrigerator. On it we're recording both when the "errors" occur and what the circumstances were. The really depressing thing about it is how often, Steve or I are at fault -- not taking Dionne out often enough. Several times, she was in her kennel and doubtless whining or barking. The problem is that she also does that sometimes when she just wants to get out. At those times, the proper response is to reprimand and ignore her. But the penalty for misjudging the situation is... another error.

I've decided to add the log to the end of this post. I don't plan to write about this topic much more; I'll just regularly update the error log here.  That way I'll have an accurate record of when exactly she was housebroken without boring readers of this blog to death with canine urinary minutiae.

I risk another grim result -- grossing you all out -- by reporting the latest dispatch from the Eliminatory front. To our horror, we've found that Dionne has begun indulging in the same loathesome habit that her predecessor did. We're redoubling our efforts to clean up any and all "temptations" asap, and to do it without Dionne seeing us (lest it give her the idea that if we also covet the morsels, they must be tasty. Gag.)

The Toileting Error log

For the moment, here's the initial Unauthorized Peeing :

1/4/13: Peed in kennel -- Didn't take her out soon enough after eating.
1/5/13: No errors
1/6/13: Peed while we were watching DVD, by the door.  We weren't paying enough attention.
1/7/13: Nothing
1/8/13: Nothing
1/9/13: Peed in J's office, while crated. J ignored her barks.
1/10/13: Peed on living room rug, inexplicably.  Caught in act by Steve and taken outside, where she peed.
1/11/13: Peed in kennel after dinner.  Not let out soon enough.

Brando's family

Our one puppy who has graduated was Brando (Darby's predecessor.) In August of 2010, he was placed with Yuriy and Aimee Zmysly, who live in greater Chicago. Today, Aimee posted this video report on how far Yuriy has come. If this isn't inspirational (and motivational), I don't know what is.

Chow hound

Three and a half weeks ago, I was writing about how slowly and deliberately Dionne ate. Ha! Those days are a memory. Now she gobbles down the cup of dogfood that she gets morning, noon, and night. Her interest in food outside of her dog bowl also has grown avid. This afternoon we witnessed something almost scary. Dionne was in Steve's office, with the door closed, when I came down from my office and went into the kitchen to start roasting the chicken for tonight's dinner. I had scarcely cut open the plastic bag encasing the bird, when I heard whining from Steve's office -- through a wall, around the corner, and down some steps. It was Dionne, communicating her desire to get out of the office and into the kitchen. We think she must have somehow smelled the chicken and responded, wanting to hang around whenever food was being cooked, in the manner of dogs throughout the millennia

We never feed our dogs scraps from the dinner table, and we're scrupulous about keeping them from the (seemingly growing) list of foods that could hurt them -- chocolate, raisins, onions, grapes, sugarless gum,  etc. etc. But I'll confess here that we've done something with all our puppies that probably isn't strictly proper. We've always let our dogs lick dirty plates and bowls. (If this grosses you out, you might want to re-think your response, the next time you have an opportunity to dine with us.)

We don't give them substantial amounts of leftovers because we don't want them to get fat. We don't worry about their germs making us sick, because after being licked, the bowls and plates go into the sink or dishwasher for vigorous scrubs with soap and very hot water. We do it for the obvious pleasure and entertainment it provides them. I think of it as a variation on the Kong (those CCI-approved dog toys that one fills with peanut butter or cream cheese or something similar.)

Dionne has taken to such activity with zeal. We have to hold her back so Tucker can get his licks in; otherwise, she bashes her way in and crowds him out (and he's such a sweetie, he never growls or pushes back.) She may eventually rank with our best bowl-polishers ever. Here she is, working on the molecules of marshmallow left over from the making of some Christmas cookies:

Still, there are limits.

This is one (for us, obviously not for her!)

Pig tail

From having a face that at first reminded me of a weary old African-American grandmother, Dionne has been changing. These days I think she's becoming quite the canine beauty. But we've noticed something odd about her tail. The end of it looks squashed and frayed, as if it got caught in a door. I'd call it ratty, except that the twist makes it more porcine.

Steve thinks it's the (one-quarter) golden retriever in Dionne; goldens often have fluffy curls. It seems a plausible explanation.

I'm not saying it's a defect; most folks would never notice it. It's almost impossible to see when her tail is wagging.  And that's most of the time.

Report card

Dionne is three months old today; we've had her for a month and a day. How has she changed since then? Let me count the biggest ways.

1) Toileting.  It feels like we're 90% there. After pooping once or twice in the house initially, she hasn't done that in weeks. She has still has peeing accidents, but they're not daily, and I tend to think of them as "handler errors" -- almost all cases when we should have taken her out, but failed to move quickly enough.

2) Relations w Tucker.  He almost bit her head off today for something she did (doubtless obnoxious.) But the seduction continues. He now routinely allows her to lie next to him; sometimes he even seems to enjoy it. A few times, I've even seen him invite her to play with him.

3) Personality. We thought at first she might be more watchful and mellow than most of our other puppies. Now we're not sure. Sometimes she is. Sometimes she's an unrestrained hellion. Certainly she's bright. She's learned a half-dozen commands, and she's mastered our daily routines. She knows the drills.

4) Walking. We continue to push her, in terms of walks, and she's doing better than any of her predecessors. Yesterday she walked to the coffee shop with her cape on for the first time.  Today we did our hour-long Sunday morning walk up Mt. Soledad, and though we took the stroller with us, we didn't once need to load her into it. She still has moments when she balks; doesn't want to come with us. But it seems to be a matter of momentum. Once trotting along, she's great. We're thinking it may be time to put the stroller back in storage.

5) Size. She still looks like a puppy.  But she's growing fast. Her days of hanging out under the couch are clearly numbered.

While vastly accelerated, raising a puppy is a lot like raising a child. Both initially change so fast you can hardly believe it. At first, both require a staggering amount of time and attention. Fortunately for both, their cuteness goes a long way to counterbalance the dark moments.

The war of the hoses

This is a sight that chills our blood: a piece of irrigation hose in our backyard. It is the first piece savaged by Dionne (yesterday).

More hose ripped out this morning

Because we live in Southern California, where it doesn't rain very much, we have a great deal of irrigation hose on our garden. Over the years, many, many pieces have been destroyed by puppies. They seem drawn to it, the way I imagine cats are drawn to catnip. (Curiously, older dogs never chew on the hoses.) In response, we've gradually added defenses that have made the garden uglier but somewhat more impervious to puppy depredation.

Ugly screen around the half whiskey barrel in which we grow lettuce. 

Ugly (but essential) screen around our blueberry bushes. Any puppy who ate my blueberries would have to be executed. CCI would not approve. 

Ugly screen around our struggling young avocado tree.  (Though the old avocado tree is mercifully immune from puppy attacks, it's sadly vulnerable to mites.) 

Some beds are still inadequately protected.
Clearly there's more work to be done.