Onward

Ears!

I didn't write a post last night because I went to bed early; I am battling a cold. I'll be reading at home today so who knows what adventures we will have (though I'm guessing that they sleep all day, which would explain their absolute rambunctiousness in the evening).

Meanwhile, two developments:  1) iCloud demands money for more storage space, primarily because we have been taking so many puppy pictures, and (2) his new collar is getting tight.

I will be as glad as anyone when spring comes, of course, but for now the snowpack makes for great playing. Once it's mud and new grass (which will get cruelly trampled and killed) it's going to be a mess out there.

I am making my dog neurotic

"Back away from the bully stick."

All of our dogs have always allowed us to take things away from them. Always. Food, chew toys, even high-value delicacies such as bones--if we ask for it, they relinquish. Always. No problem.

They might have the occasional food aggression with each other (very occasional) but they have never guarded their food from us.

Why do I not leave well enough alone?

One day in puppy kindergarten, the teacher talked about the importance of making sure your dog will let you take things away. She suggested to the class that when our puppy is eating dinner or chewing on something delicious, we take it away very briefly--and then give it back to the puppy even better. Add some kibble. Dip it in peanut butter. Whatever.  That way the puppy learns that if he lets us have what he's got, no problem--he will get it back improved.

Frankly, I think that is giving the puppy too much credit for deductive reasoning.

And yet, I did it anyway, and all I have done is make Angus neurotic.

The other night we gave each dog a bully stick. You know what a bully stick is: it's a dried bull penis. But nobody's going to buy them if they're called that. They're essentially sticks of chewable petrified leather. The dogs love them.

So Angus was cheerfully gnawing away when I decided to try the puppy teacher's plan. I sang out, "Ang-us, drop-it," and he did, immediately, but he didn't look happy about it.  I gave him a fistful of kibble and immediately returned the bully stick--the original thing but better, right?

He resumed chewing but he gave me the stink-eye.

I did this two or three times and each time he relinquished it without a peep. But he started to look a bit haunted.

So tonight we gave him a bully stick, and he dashed off to the front hallway to chew. Every time either one of us happened by, he'd flee to a different room.  It took a while for me to realize what the problem was--he thought I was going to take it away again.

So I tossed him some kibble. I didn't ask for the bully stick; I just tossed him some kibble. But this presented a new dilemma: to eat the kibble, he had to drop the stick. Which he did, briefly-- gobbled the kibble, grabbed the stick. I did this twice more. He wolfed down the kibble after putting a big protective paw over the stick.

"He's got a pretty good thing going on," Doug noted.

After that, I left him alone. He curled up on the couch and gnawed away, and we kept our distance.

You know, he was just fine before. Why did I mess with him? 

But I did learn a couple of things: My instincts are good. The teachers know what they're talking about, but if it's not a problem, I should just leave it alone.

Oh, and a third thing:  I spend waaaaaaay too much time with my dogs.

It's all just puppy drama

"Oh, I'm not so bad."

Walks are so much better. Angus occasionally barks like a maniac when something startles him--a weird noise, the scritching of an ice scraper on a windshield--but mostly he is hyper alert but calm.  Yesterday on one of his many, many walks (he is so indulged) (Rosie too) I took him right through the belly of the beast and he stayed cool.

That is, we saw up ahead two smallish boys with big yellow snow shovels flailing away at the sidewalk, and their dad briskly removing snow from the driveway.  "Want to cross the street?" Doug asked.

"Nope," I said, shortening up Angus's leash and getting treats at the ready. "We're going in."

And go in we did, right past the boys, past the dad, past all those shiny sharp fast-moving shovels, and I stuffed kibble into Angus's mouth just to be on the safe side, on the theory that you can't bark if you're chewing, but he really showed no sign of alarm.

He did bark at a young woman who was sitting on a bench down at the lake, and despite my brisk UH UH I had to kind of drag him away, but that was his only misstep. In his defense, she was sitting on a very snowy bench that she hadn't even bothered to swipe the snow from, and perhaps he was warning her that she was going to get wet.

In the morning I took him next door so he could properly meet the little boys who live on the other side of the fence--the little boys that Rosie barks at (we are working on it). We do not want Angus to start that terrible habit.

So we got all leashed up and went around to their yard, and they fed him treats galore and he was absolutely perfect, sitting (mostly) not jumping (mostly) and when Milo, the older boy, fell down in the snow the way that 7-year-old boys will do, Angus jumped at him and licked his face.

"You know why I like Angus?" asked Owen, the younger boy. "Because he's a baby."

And I thought, Oh man. you have no idea how big this baby is going to get.

We will go over there a lot, as often as possible, until the boys are just part of the scenery.  Thank goodness it has gotten a little warmer and people are actually outside again.

But when I am feeling in despair about things, when I start fretting that we have already ruined this wonderful puppy and have allowed him to be a barking, counter-surfing, biting, jumping-at-the-door maniac, Doug calms me down. (It's true, I am more tightly wound than he is. I know that surprises all of you.) "It's just puppy drama," he says. "He'll grow out of it."

Did I tell you that Angus is signed up to be neutered in March? And he is enrolled in Obedience 1 in April?  He'll grow out of it for sure. Or he'll be trained out of it.

Right now he is lying on his back on the living room floor, rolling back and forth, waving his gigantic paws in the air. My little diva.

In praise of the crate

It's 3:30 p.m. on a snowy Saturday afternoon, and Angus is in his crate. He's had a very busy day so far--up at 5:30 a.m., outside repeatedly, two long walks, a little "name game," some stern corrections when he barked at a young woman sitting on a bench down by the lake, some huge praise and treats when he didn't bark at a jogger and five people walking past, a little tennis ball, a little tug, a lot of romping with Rosie in the snow.

But now he is in his crate, and he is sleeping, and we can do whatever we like without those puppy fears--you know, fears that he'll chew up an electrical cord or jump on the coffee table or reverse all of his housebreaking and pee in the living room.  He's in his crate, and he is safe and we are free.

We did not always have this freedom with all of our dogs. Toby, as I've mentioned before, was my first dog, and I knew nothing. I didn't crate-train him because I thought crates were cruel, like jail, like being in the pound. Consequently, over his first year he destroyed my couch, ate my boyfriend's favorite ballcap and took eight months to be house broken.

Baby Toby and the couch he later destroyed.

We tried half-heartedly to crate-train Boscoe, but we were not convinced then of the need for a crate. And with Boscoe it hardly mattered: He was the sweetest, mellowest, most obedient dog on the planet and he didn't really need to be confined. He never did anything wrong. This was the dog who, as a tiny puppy, squeezed under the back fence to freedom but only trotted around to the front of the house and sat on the front steps, waiting for us to find him.

Riley was, as you know, terrified of everything, and that included being in a crate. We don't know what happened in his first home, but it wasn't good, and while we did keep him in a crate for the first few months whenever we went to work, he never got used to it. It was heartbreaking; I would drive home every day on my lunch break to let him out and he was always so happy to be in the yard, and free!  And then when my lunch break was over I'd have to physically wrangle him into the crate--he'd actually spread his four legs as wide as possible to keep from fitting inside the doorway, and I'd have to peel them off, one by one, and stuff him in.

As I drove away I could hear his screams and howls. It killed me.

As soon as it was responsible to let Riley stay home without being incarcerated, we took the crate apart and stored it away. He never used it again, though he did stake out his own little den areas--under the kitchen table, and under the dining room table.

I had heard people say that their dogs loved their crates and sometimes went inside of their own volition, and I have to tell you, I thought those people were lying to me.

And then we got Rosie. And now, Angus. And both of them love their crates.

Both learned early on that if they went into their crates only good things would happen there--food and toys and treats. Even though it's only been a month or so since Angus joined our pack, he knows: If I sing out, "Angus, go to bed!" he turns and races into his crate and I toss in a handful of kibble and he is happy.  He stays in there without a peep. And why not? It has a thick soft mat, and the blue fleece blanket that he came to us with, and a small water dish, and a whole array of chew toys--a knuckle bone, an elk antler, a flat fleece puffy toy. All the comforts of home.

He sleeps in that crate (we still carry it up the stairs to our bedroom every night because we are big believers in the pack sleeping together) and he eats in that crate and when we eat he's in that crate, too, and when we are not home he hangs out in that crate and sometimes, like now, he's in there just because we all need a break.

He knows it's his safe place, and when he went through a goofy period where he didn't want us to put the harness on him before walks, he'd run and hide in the crate.  It was his sanctuary.  (I learned to shut the crate door before getting the harness out of the closet.)

And now, as I write this, Angus is curled up in his crate and Rosie is standing on the back of the couch, barking at the mailman out the front window.  I know the solution for this:

"Rosie, go to bed!"

Ahhhh. Peace.

Nipping it in the bud

"Who, me?"

I'm on to you, little guy.

Once I realized that Angus doesn't bark at strangers when he's walking with Mary, everything changed. No more Ms. Nice Guy! No more sweet talking and treats and dragging him up to reluctant strangers and asking them to feed him kibble and scratch his ears.

No way. Huh uh. Or, I should say, UH UH. That's the key phrase these days.

This morning we left the house at 7 a.m. and there was a person waiting for the bus across the street and Angus started to bark and I gave his leash a sharp little jerk, and I said, "UH UH." And he stopped barking.

And we walked a little farther and saw an older man walking through the park on a trail that intersected ours, and Angus stiffened and his ears went up and just as he was about to bark I gave the leash a little jerk and I said, "UH UH" and he didn't bark.

We rounded the corner and there was a woman waiting at the bus stop, the same woman who was there yesterday, the one who likes cats, not dogs, and Angus started to bark and I gave his leash a sharp jerk and I said, "UH UH," and I took him across the street just to be on the safe side.

And he didn't bark.

This evening it worked pretty well too. Not perfect, but so much better than it has been. Each time he saw a person I watched his body language and just at the moment he looked like he was going to bark, I gave his leash a jerk and said, "UH UH," and while he still sometimes got one or two barks out, that was all, just one or two, and they were neither loud nor ferocious.

And after we had walked on a ways, I stopped and praised him and gave him valuable treats, the really good ones, the bacon-flavored ones, and he got all bouncy and happy. It was snowing so beautifully, big, thick flakes glowing in the streetlights, and if it wasn't for all the cursing I did every time I slipped on the ice, which was often, it was a lovely, lovely walk.

With my very good boy Angus.

And just because I haven't posted one of these lately, here:

The morning cuddle

What goes on in that little puppy head of yours, Angus? We shall soon find out

Angus, you are soooo busted. I found out today that you do not bark when you walk with Mary the Magic Dogwalker.  Nor do you roughhouse with Rosie, jumping on her head, pulling her leash, acting absolutely god-awful-obnoxious. No, you walk nicely, goddamn you.

Mary brought you past a school where children were streaming out the doors, chatting, heading toward cars and buses, and you were interested but you did not bark. She brought you up to a woman with a three-year-old toddler, and you did not bark but allowed yourself to be petted.

This is the same day when, on the morning walk with me, you barked all the way across the street and up to a woman waiting for a bus. (A woman who declined to pet you, even after I made you sit. This socialization business is not easy.)

But why bark when you're with me and not when you're with Mary?

What is in that head of yours? What kind of blood courses through those puppy veins?

We are about to find out.

Because we are checking your DNA.

We ordered the kit--I think it's the same kit we used years ago on Rosie and Riley, the one that told us that Riley was mostly border collie, and that Rosie was pure Lab on one side and mostly harrier on the other.

It arrived on Saturday, and we did the mouth scraping as well as we could--Angus kept chomping down on the little stick, just like Riley did years ago, and I have no idea if I got any DNA off him or not--and then we set them out to dry.

And then we put them in the special pouch inside the special box and walked to the mailbox and dropped it all in. And in a few weeks, we shall see what that crazy Angus is made of.  Part border collie, part Lab, and part bark?

Something new to worry about

It's early morning, and Angus is at his sweetest. It's 5:30 a.m., and he's been out in the yard and back inside and, briefly, in my lap and then lying on top of my feet, and there's been no biting, as there is in the evenings, and right this very moment he is lying kind of half under the dining room table, chewing sleepily on a flat periwinkle blue puffy toy.

You would not believe, to see him now, that on the walks he has started turning into Cujo.

This is a relatively new thing, and I am hoping that there is some way to train this reaction out of him. Maybe he'll grow out of it, but I don't want to count on that alone.

Here is the problem: On the walks he has started barking at people ferociously. He used to just sort of woof, but now he is doing full throttle barks, and even though he is not even four months old yet, he has in recent days found his voice (so to speak) and he has developed a big loud kind of hysterical-sounding bark.

He does this whenever we see anyone, no matter how far off they may be.

People at bus stops, innocently waiting for the bus. People walking blocks away, just little dots of movement in the distance. Yesterday morning he went off with a volley of barks at 7 a.m. at a woman who was trying to scrape the ice off her windshield. Maybe it was the skritching noise that got him, maybe the movement of the woman's arms, maybe the woman herself. I don't know.  She was a block away, and I hoped to bring him up to her and ask her to give him some kibble and let him sniff the ice scraper, but by the time we had navigated the icy pathway and climbed over the snow berm at the end of the street, she was gone.

Last night it was a man shoveling who got him going, and this time we did stop. "Would you mind petting this puppy?" I asked. "He needs to get used to people."

And the man was terrific. He stopped shoveling and he made Angus sit and he scratched his head and gave him a treat, and then he and I chatted and Angus milled around at the end of the leash, not barking, entirely unconcerned.  And then we walked on.

So this is what I try to do: When Angus goes nuts, I make him sit. I give him a treat. I try to bring him up to the person and let him see that the person is not scary. (I am assuming these are fear barks, not aggressive barks.)

But it simply is not always possible. It's not possible even half the time.  The other night he went off on a guy who was cross-country skiing in the park; the guy wanted nothing to do with him.  Sometimes the person is across the street, down the block, gettting into a car, and all I can do is hurry Angus along, stuffing him full of kibble as we go.

But this is such a distressing turn of events! I am not sure if what I am doing is going to help. We just cannot have him barking at everyone he sees on the walks. This just cannot continue!

Two nights ago on the second of the evening walks (because, as you know, I walk the dogs one at a time these days), we were at the corner when a bus pulled up, noisily farted out its exhaust, opened its creaky doors, and a woman came down the steps. I held the leash tightly, worried that barking would begin, and then I looked at the dog and realized, Rosie. I didn't have Angus with me, I had Rosie. She just stood there, waiting quietly for me to walk on.

Sweet, gentle Rosie the former wolverine, who only barks if she is in our house or our yard.

Right now Angus is lying on his belly, batting at tennis ball that is underneath Doug's chair. How can such a sweet dog turn into Cujo?

Our little capitalist

Under the table, the noisy chicken at his side.

Angus has claimed under the dining room table as his space. This is bittersweet for me, because that was Riley's space, too, when he was alive. (Riley also claimed under the kitchen table.)

I sit at the dining room table a lot--it's where my laptop is, and where I write--and Angus often lies right at my feet. Sometimes on my feet. It's quite adorable, when he's not trying to bite my toes off.

Lately he has taken to storing his favorite toys under there. Or maybe he's not storing them so much as stockpiling. Every night I pick up all of the toys from all over the living room and dining room and front hallway and I put them in the Woof! toybox in the corner.

Both dogs know that box is for them, and every morning they raid it. By the end of the day, there's usually a rope tug, a roll of brown paper (mostly chewed), a couple of elk antlers, a tennis ball, and at least one puffy toy under the table.

Silly boy. It's not like Rosie can't find them there.

"Nice try, little guy."

Laundry day

 Sunday is laundry day.

We are missing so many socks.

 

 I don't think I've ever done laundry and ended up with so many solo socks before.

I have no idea why.

One of life's mysteries, I guess.

Saturday

Busy day yesterday! No time to blog!

Which is why this guy has gone back to bed.

Oh, those ears!

Look at those ears. They are not floppy. These are not Lab ears. They stand up. (Not hers. Hers flop. His.)

Take another look. Yep. Straight up.

They're very cute. But what kind of ears are they? And what will he look like when he's full grown?

Some of you have suggested German shepherd.

But some Border collies have those ears.

He's not part Corgi.

I dunno. It's anyone's guess what he'll look like when he's full grown. Maybe like this:

You just never know.

Early and late

Angus in the morning

At 4:30 a.m. I need to get up, just for a minute, and I tiptoe across the bedroom but the floor squeaks a little and soon the puppy is squeaking too.

I climb back into bed. I whisper, "It's OK, Angus, go back to sleep," but it doesn't work. Sometimes it works, but not this time. He squeaks again, and then he chirps. "Shhh," I say. He chirps again, and when I don't respond he kicks it up a notch to a whine.

For the next half hour we engage in a standoff. He chirps and squeals, and I hiss, "NO. Go back to sleep!" in a fierce whisper.

Chirp

Noooo

Squeak

Shhhhhh!

Whine!

For half an hour we have this conversation in the dark.

I do not want to wake Doug, but I am delusional if I think he can't hear this. He is playing possum, though, and who can blame him? It's my turn. He's late duty, and I am early duty, and when it becomes clear that Angus is not going to go back to sleep but, instead, is going to escalate his protests, I throw back the covers, and I get up.

I glare at Angus but he does not melt under my fierce gaze, does not even cower. Instead, he sits up and wags his tail.

The way we get Angus to sleep through the night is this: Doug stays up. I conk out about 9 or 9:30, but Doug powers through. He plays with the dogs, he takes them out for a final pee around 10:15, he puts Angus into his crate, all while I am blissfully sleeping.

In the morning, it is my turn. Doug sleeps in and I get up at 5 and let the dogs out. (Or 4:30.)

This way Angus sleeps straight through for six or seven hours. (Not eight. Never eight.)

So this morning I go out with them into the back yard, the air not as cold as it has been, the stars hazier, and watch the dogs do their business and wonder if I can get back to sleep or if this is it, I'm up for the day.

Back to sleep.

 The dogs race back into the house. It is so early Rosie does not even bark; I think she is half asleep. I turn on the coffee maker, collect the newspapers, look around for the dogs, and there they are, cuddled together in the bed by the radiator.

It is 5:15 a.m.  I am wide awake. The dogs go back to sleep, but for me, this is it; I am up for the day.

I've said it before, I'll say it again: Look at those feet

I'm not obsessed, truly. But I need to note that Angus is on his second collar and his third harness and we have only had him for six weeks.

The new harness is rather loose around the neck but I am confident he will grow into it. Probably very soon.

On tonight's slippery walk (it was 40 degrees so snow melted and ran across the sidewalks and then of course it froze--this will be our lives for the next two months) we ran into a neighbor who had not seen Angus since early January.

Right before she said, "He's so cute," she said, "He's so big!"

I refuse to do the puppy calculator again.

Happy Valentine's Day

When you get pink hearts for Valentine's Day ...

but they don't contain chocolate.

Sigh!

GODDAMNIT!

Mornings

In the mornings, Angus likes to lie in a patch of sunshine.

 Mornings are the sweetest time. Angus stirs around 5 a.m., starts making little chirpy noises. I call to him from where I am lying in bed: "It's OK, Buddy, I'm right here," in hopes that he's just feeling a little lost, as we often do when we wake up in the dark alone. Sometimes it works and he settles down; other times (like this morning) he's not after reassurance; he's after getting on with things.

We go downstairs and he is not chewing on me or jumping; he's still a little sleepy, and he licks my face or my hand and then staggers out into the cold yard.

On the walk, after breakfast, we walk fast; he is a good walker on the leash when it is just the two of us. This morning we walked for almost 40 minutes--down to the lake, and then over the pedestrian bridge and back past the pileated tree. The sky was just waking up, a pale peach at the eastern horizon, pale blue above. A half-dozen crows flew overhead and Angus tilted his head to watch them go.

Back home, he plays with Rosie a little. And then he finds a patch of sunshine, curls up and falls asleep.

Ritual

Here is how the evening goes, night after night:

I get off the bus, walk up the steps of a quiet house. There is one lamp on. I can see the triangle ears of a quizzical dog -- Rosie -- who is standing on the back of the couch looking out the window, attracted by the sound of my bus.

I slide the key in the lock. All is quiet. I turn the knob. Quiet. I push open the front door. The screams begin. Screams and moans and shrieks and howls, and they just get louder and louder and louder.

Rosie is waiting by the door. The noise is not coming from her.

The noise might be coming from him.

Auugggh

The noise absolutely is coming from him.

He's in his kennel, and I feel bad because he's been in there for hours. But it would be folly to let him out right away. First I have to take off my down coat, because he loves to pull on it and his teeth get caught in the fabric and I fear holes and loss of feathers.

Then, if I am wearing a dress, I have to go upstairs and put on pants or else he will destroy my tights.

And if I am wearing a sweater, I need to change into an old sweatshirt because otherwise his little teeth and claws will get caught in the yarn of the sweater and snag and pull it.

Then I usually have to go pee.  (I get to pee first. Rank has its privileges.)

Rosie is watching me patiently as I go about my tasks, following me from room to room. Angus is hollering bloody murder and throwing himself against the sides of his kennel.

I open the kennel door and he rockets into my arms, he bounces against me, his claws catch on my sweatshirt and if I forgot to tie back my hair (I forgot to tie back my hair) he grabs a chunk and pulls.

I open the back door. Rosie goes out, trots down the back stairs into the yard. Angus goes out, turns around, leaps into me again. I can't tell if he's trying to embrace me, or knock me over.

We go outside together. All the way down the porch steps he keeps turning and leaping against me, and I have to steady him and aim him again toward the yard.

Once his feet hit the snow, he's off--racing across the yard toward the spirea bush, toward the rabbit pellets, toward Rosie, stopping to pee, and I am forgotten.

------

So on Tuesday he will be 14 weeks old. He weighs 22.5 pounds. According to the puppy calculator, he'll be 83.5 pounds when full grown.

I just keep reminding myself how wrong it was about Rosie....

I hate rabbits

A stuffed bunny is the only kind of bunny I like.

Last night when I let the dogs out, they raced toward the spirea bush over by the fence, and out sprinted--actually, lumbered--a very fat, rather slow rabbit. I do not know how it is that Rosie did not catch that thing but I am profoundly glad that she didn't. It scooted across the yard, squeezed under the back fence and disappeared into the alley.

This explains the dogs' eternal fascination with the spirea bush.

I suppose the rabbits are living on fallen bird seed, as are the mice that we see skittering around from time to time, and I sure wish that owl would come back. He could live all winter on the bounty of our yard!

A neighbor texted me last night to tell me it was hooting on her street around 7 p.m.  She lives only two or three blocks from me--that's nothing for an owl! They can fly that far in three seconds! Or two! Please come back!

Angus let me sleep in this morning. It was beautiful. Rosie jumped down from the bed at 4:40 a.m.--perhaps the newspapers had arrived and she wanted an early start on the crossword--and Angus chirped a little and I sleepily told him to hang on and the next thing I knew it was 6 o'clock. Bliss!


I put them both outside and they did their business but Angus always needs to do it twice--once right away, and then again a few minutes later. So I put them back out around 6:30 and this time I did not stand and watch them (mistake no. 1) because for cripe's sake it was three below zero and I was cold.

When I went out to get them, Angus was hoovering up the little rabbit pellets that are scattered across the snow. I ran out and tried to chase him away--who knows what sicknesses those things hold?--but there are a million of them. I thought briefly of getting a mutt mitt and cleaning them up but I knew it would be futile.

So, instead, I let them in and let them play (mistake no. 2) and the next thing I knew I was saying, "What the heck is that smell?"

Yes, Angus, my dear sweet lovable I-thought-he-was-housetrained dog had taken a giant crap in the far corner of the front hallway.  Dog lovers will sympathize with this post. Everyone else will be thoroughly grossed out, and for that I do apologize.

Clearly, he had been so busy in the yard with the rabbit turds he had forgotten about his own.

I yelled "What's THIS?" and he wagged his tail but Rosie looked so agitated that I felt guilty and gave her an extra treat.

Thank God that Doug got back this afternoon from ice fishing. He has been gone since Thursday.  I was counting the minutes, I swear to God. His turn.

Socialization stall

"Hello....hello.... is anyone there?"

It has been a low key weekend. Angus is so good, so sweet, so eager to please that unless he starts misbehaving I will have to end this blog: There is nothing to report!  Unlike Rosie's puppyhood, he has not brought a dead mouse into the house to play with; he does not have regular wolverine tantrums; he had never dragged a tree branch five times bigger than he is up the stairs; he has never even tried to steal a stick of butter.

He is lying at my feet right now, having cheerfully surrendered one of my slippers, which he was attempting to eat, and is now chewing up a roll of paper that I gave him. He is so easy to please.

Walking the dogs separately takes a lot of time but temporarily solves the leash problem. Eventually, Angus will get leash training, and then I think we will have to do training for walking them together. But for now, separate walks, even if it means I spend most of my life walking dogs.

This morning Rosie got to go first, and we did a nice 2.5 mile loop up through the fireplace woods and then across the West Picnic Grounds in the park, where we ran into exactly one person: a man walking what appeared to be a gigantic Brittany. "That's exactly what she is," he said when I asked.

The dog looked just like Gus and Greta next door, except almost twice their size. Very friendly, and she and Rosie did a little play bow and race-around action (while on the leash, of course).

Gus and Greta, the Brittanys next door.

By the time we got home my face was frozen but the temperature had soared to 4 degrees above zero.

So off Angus and I went, around the lake. I hoped to run into people and make him sit and accept treats and get more sociable--he has developed a very bad habit of barking at people he sees waiting at the bus stop, and while I try to distract him from that I also understand it because in this big cold ice cube of a world, seeing another human being is definitely startling and rare.

And so it was down at the lake. Though the sun was pouring down and there was no wind and four degrees soared to six in the hour that we walked, we saw nobody. Nobody. Just the windswept snow and the frozen lake. There weren't even any ice fishermen out there today.

Finally, toward the end, we saw a couple of joggers, but you can't ask someone to stop running in order to pet a puppy. So I just made Angus sit and fed him treats (i.e., kibble) while the joggers thundered past in their neoprene masks.

It wasn't great socialization, but it was something.

As we left the lake, finally, finally, we saw a man with a dog heading our way.

"Can my puppy meet your dog?" I asked.

"What?" he said. He wasn't very friendly but his dog was--a lovely mottled grey and white cattle dog with striking blue eyes.

So the dogs met, and bowed, and sniffed, and raced in leashed circles, and then I tried to hand the man some kibble. "Would you like to give the puppy a treat?" I said. "I'm trying to socialize him."

"Ah, no thank you," the man said. And he and his dog walked on, and Angus and I went home.

Sleeping Beauty, apres walk.

I suppose I should have put him in the car and driven him to Petco or somewhere and had him meet people but jeez by the time I got home I'd been walking dogs for two hours and I had a lot of other things I needed to do, and besides Angus gets car sick, and in any case he wanted a nap.

I hope this cold snap eases by next weekend. I am embarrassed to admit that I am getting tired of the relentless, eternal frigid cold. And Angus needs to make some new friends.

Contraband

Look at that gorgeous swirly belly. Could you deny that dog anything?

For instance, your mitten?

I worked from home today, tidying up the Sunday books pages remotely, and then reading--I have 13 more books I have to read for National Book Critics Circle before mid-March, and my plan is to polish off three of them this weekend. I have almost made it through one, and then tomorrow's book is a short one, and then I'll start on one of the two novels I have yet to read.

I love the reading but hate the panicking.

Today began at 5:10 a.m., as usual (hooray for sleeping through the night, Angus!) and has been about 3/4 reading and 1/4 dogs. I walked them separately, and it works so well--Angus is actually pretty good on the leash without Rosie, not pulling much but walking nicely, only occasionally grabbing things such as my mitten or the poop bag or the leash. (And in his defense, these things are swinging above his head in a most distracting way.)

We walked for about 40 minutes and when we got home I gave him a puffy toy to chew on the living room floor. After a while I thought, Hmmm, that puffy toy sure sounds oddly crunchy.

And I walked over and saw the little red thing that I thought was an eyeball he had pulled out of the toy, and I thought, That's irresponsible, putting these choking-hazard eyeballs into a chew toy! But I was quick (I am quick) to see that they weren't eyeballs at all, but some kind of little red LED lights, and the crunchy thing was one of the fuses.

If you look closely, you can see little Angus teeth-marks on one of the fuses.

Holy mother of god. I have no idea where these came from, or how he found them, or why he thought they were more fun than a puffy toy. I'm not sure what a fuse would do to the innards of a puppy, but I'm guessing it wouldn't be good.

To which Angus says, from his soft bed by the radiator, La de da, la de da.

Less angst, more fun

So this morning I resolved to walk them separately.  Rosie was not happy to be left behind, but Doug was home, and his friend Steve, who was visiting, so she was fine.

Angus and I set out at about 6:30 a.m., two degrees above zero, the sky in the east a pale peach, the snow pale blue, not a soul around. As we walked, the sky lightened, the snow brightened, the sun came up.

Angus grabbed his leash once or twice, and went for my hands (oh, the hands!), but mostly without the distraction of Rosie (not that I am blaming her; I am not) he did much better and trotted along nicely.

It is adorable to see how fascinated he is by dry leaves skittering along the top of the snowbank, or sprigs of dead grass poking through. Somewhere, I have no idea where, he found a long red plastic straw, and he carried it proudly for several blocks before dropping it when something else caught his eye.

He is sprightly and spunky and fascinated by the world.

This evening, though, after a long day at work, and Doug off with his buddies, the idea of two separate walks was far less appealing. I got the brilliant idea of spraying both leashes, top to bottom, with Bitter Apple, and I squirted my gloves for good measure, and then I stuffed a puffy toy in my pocket in case Angus needed something to chew, but it was all for naught. The first two blocks of the walk were manic, worse than last night, with Angus grabbing Rosie's leash, and his own, and when I handed him the toy, he ignored it and went right for my gloves, pulling one off my hand.

I made him sit and I told him walk, even though he doesn't yet know that command, and miracles do happen because suddenly he settled down and trotted along nicely for the rest of the stroll. The evening felt so charmed I was sure we would see an owl and a fox (and maybe an owl with a fox) but we saw nothing, not a soul, even though it was a beautiful windless night, 11 degrees, with a glowing half-moon above.

And now he is gnawing like mad on a knuckle bone, and I am trying to stay awake (and keep him awake) so that I don't have to get up at midnight again.

I do wish you could all have seen him playing with Rosie about a half hour ago--they both got more wound up than I've seen in a while, and Rosie was leaping from the couch to the floor, into a play bow, around in a circle, up onto the couch, back down to her play bow, it was mad, it was fast, it was hilarious, and Angus was hiding under the easy chair, poking his head out and barking and then retreating again like a turtle in a shell.

And then the wrestling, for a long time. I swear there is nothing happier than watching two dogs play.

We need to figure out walking before Angus gets much bigger

Before the evening walk.

 They look so sedate, don't they? Almost bored. Time to walk. Whatever.

Hmph. As they say, looks are deceiving. Yesterday morning I had to sacrifice my puffy blue mitten to Angus in order to keep the walk from turning into a brawl. He always starts out relatively okay, but about a block from home the chaos starts. He grabbed Rosie's leash and tugged, he grabbed his own leash and tugged harder, he got behind me and tripped me up, he ran up in the snowbank, he lunged straight at Rosie's head. (And she turned and corrected him. That is, growled. So he did it again.)

Much of this was on ice, and all of it was on a walk no longer than about eight blocks.

This time I did not swear. It was clear that Angus was desperate to have something in his mouth, anything--leash, Rosie, anything. So I gave him my mitten, and it made him happy: he shook it (to break its neck), he dropped it and pawed at it (to make sure it was dead), and then he left it in the snow, entranced by a dead oak leaf that skittered by, and I had to double back to retrieve it.

But he's getting bigger and stronger, and I think it's time to start walking them separately.  When Doug and I can both go, the walks are wonderful. But when it's only one of us, they are starting to get -- not untenable, but not much fun. Angus is in one of his "fear stages," and when he sees a stranger, he barks. It's a funny, raspy bark, not yet developed, but still, I don't want him to get in the habit of barking at people. If I am alone with him, I can bring him up to the person and they can meet and Angus can learn that people are nice and often (what a surprise!) carry around his own personal brand of kibble.

But if I have both dogs, Rosie (normally a stranger-lover) gets wary--protective, I assume, of Angus (even though he seems quite capable of protecting himself), and I have to drag both of them off in the other direction.

So. More time spent walking, one at a time, but that's OK. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's walking.

Meanwhile, the wrestling/playing continues apace. Angus is getting so big--yesterday he weighed 21.5 pounds. I put his information into my obsession, the Puppy Weight Calculator, and it told me he is going to weigh 85 pounds when he is full grown.

Over my dead body.

My dead body dragged down the street on a dog walk, most likely.

I get no respect

Angus's crate is his kingdom and his domain.

I tell you, Angus is just flat-our weird. Either that, or he's playing me like a violin.

And since he's part border collie, and therefore smarter than I am, it's probably the latter.

But why?

For instance: This morning, I pulled out Rosie's leash and Angus's little red harness and sang happily, "Who wants to go for a stroll?" in my most excited sing-song voice. Rosie raced up to me and sat. Angus shot out of the kitchen, rounded the corner on two legs, and dived into his crate.

I could not lure him out for blood nor money (nor kibble).

He's been doing this a lot lately, at walk time.

He only does it for me. Not for Doug. Not for Mary the dog-walker, who seemed surprised by my question and said he has never shown anything except enormous enthusiasm and joy.

Yeah.

I laid down a row of kibble bits leading from the crate door to me, four feet away, hoping to lure him out. He just gave me that look. He's been giving me that look a lot lately, as he starts figuring me out.

A fine example of "that look."

 "I can wait," I said, and sat back on my heels.

Rosie, bored, walked up and hoovered down the kibble like it was a line of cocaine. Angus just watched from the depths of his crate.

I reached in and dragged him out by the scruff of his neck and wrestled him into the harness. It's a perfectly easy harness, nothing over the head or face; it just Velcroes around his shoulders and then tucks under his front legs and snaps over the back. Easy peasy. Plus, adorable.

So I got it on him and turned to get his leash from the closet, and zip! he was gone. Back into his crate.

Once on the walk, he was fine, joyous, plus he did his business immediately, so what was with the stalling?

Other things: He comes down the main staircase now. For Doug. Not for me. I still have to carry him. If I walk away callously, leaving him at the top, he whimpers pathetically.

And when I come home from work, he jumps all over me, biting my hands, snagging my sweater, rocketing up toward my face. (For Doug, he races outside nicely and pees.)

Is this what it's like to be a mother?

Angus is teething and we are shrieking in pain

Doug is taking his life into his hands by letting this biting machine smooch him.

The chewing has accelerated.

Save yourselves.

Angus is three months old, and now is the time when his puppy teeth will begin to fall out and his adult teeth will begin to come in. I don't know how painful this is, but he sure is biting a lot. He has elk antlers, Kongs, rope tugs, puffy toys, rolls of paper and tennis balls but what he most goes after is me: my hands, my hair, the hem of my coat, my sweater.

He's lucky he's adorable. And I'm lucky that skin repairs itself.

Angus' Super (Bowl) Sunday

"Are you looking at my feet?"

I think that of all our dogs, Riley was the best walker. Toby was great, but he'd rather be running after a tennis ball. Boscoe was completely obliging, but on hot summer days he never felt like going very far and, quite honestly, he was a pretty lazy dog, for a border collie, and he was just as happy sleeping.

Rosie walks well, but she gets cold easily (she has any number of fleecy jackets, none of which seem to make much difference) and her paws are sensitive to road salt and sometimes she just gives up and makes it clear she wants to go home.

But Riley! Riley would walk as far as you wanted in any kind of weather. Doug nicknamed him Tercel, after my old Toyota Tercel, which plowed doggedly through snow and ice and kept going no matter what, always got me where I was going and back again. One Memorial Day weekend, when everything was closed, I drove that car to Duluth from the Twin Cities with a cracked head gasket. I just kept stopping every few miles to pour water into the radiator, and steam billowed out as I drove, but we made it just fine. That was the Tercel, and that was Riley.

Riley was a walker, happy to be in motion. And I think Angus will be a lot like Riley in that regard.

Riley was always happy to be trudging along wherever we took him.

It was seven degrees below zero this morning when I walked the dogs--first Rosie, then Angus, because we got snow overnight and the footing was treacherous and it just felt safer to walk one dog at a time. There was no wind, and beautiful blue sky and fresh pure snow and brilliant sun that actually felt warm on my face, but the air was cold cold cold.

Rosie got cold on the walk; she didn't turn back, but I could feel her shivering. She has short thin hair and she is, after all, from Missouri. But Angus! When it was his turn he just trudged along happily, walking like a dog much older than he is, steady and firm and with that little strut of his. He's an old soul, I think. We could have gone a lot farther except for the fact that by then my face was starting to freeze.

Doug went shopping and ran errands and came home with two big chew toys, and Rosie and Angus spent their afternoon quibbling over one of them, ignoring the other (even though the toys were identical).  I read on the couch and at one point both dogs hopped up with me, and Angus curled up at the bend of my knees and put his little head on my leg and I cannot think of a more pleasant way to spend an hour.

He is eating robustly and gaining weight fast. I did the puppy weight calculator based on his new weight (20 pounds) and his new age (13 weeks as of Tuesday) and came up with the staggering number of 83 pounds.

He is already so bulky I have trouble holding onto him.

Here is proof that he came down the main stairs on Saturday. He has not even thought about attempting it again:

We are in no hurry. He is already growing up much too fast.