Week 4

Two nearly serious incidents this week. When I prepared the house for Lewi’s arrival, I changed furniture and moved every thing around in the lounge so that there were no accessible wires. The two wires I was stuck with were the aerial cable and one of the two speaker cables. So I ran them through some plastic trunking. On Sunday evening, having had a very busy day, I fell asleep in front of the TV, Lewi woke up. He managed to pull the cover off the trunking, pull out the wires and bite through one of them. When I woke, he was calmly laying there chewing the wire. The voltage is not enough to do any harm, but if it had been a power cable… I’ve adapted some screw on clips to prevent further problems. He, of course went straight back to have another go when I had put it back together. I reinforced the Leave command perfectly then, loud and accompanied by a foot stamp and clap of the hands. It did frighten him rather, but he hasn’t been near it again! The other incident followed on from workmen in the garden, they have removed my old pond, which I had drained, and Lewi found an old bottle in the rubble. It had contained a blue dye for the pond water (to discourage growth of algae with out using poisons) the bottle had fallen behind the pond, years ago. I hadn’t noticed it when they finished work for the day, but Lewi did. He came trotting into the house, bottle in mouth, dripping the fluid. The leave command got him to drop it, an inspection of his mouth showed none of it on him, but it has stained the carpet. The bottle said it is safe with pets, but… So I had to dig through all the rubble to see if there was anything else that could be dangerous, I might as well have done the work myself! They are pruning trees later in the week, so that will mean a house full of leaves and branches, till they clear it all away.

I weighed him today, sort of. I stood on the scales on my own then holding him. Of course he wriggled and wriggled so I got a different reading every time I tried. So I think his weight is about 5kg. That’s around about the same rate of growth as in his first 2 weeks here.

He spends less of the day sleeping than he did, and he is definitely a lot more active throughout the day, it’s a wonder that he puts on any weight at all. For of a lot of the evening he dozes, keeping tabs on my movements. If I get up to make a cup of tea, he trots along behind me then settles in the kitchen till I go back to the lounge, then it’s back to lie at my feet. My little shadow.

We had some collar and lead and practice at the weekend. I took Lewi to my mother’s house to collect her for a day’s visit. Her garden is definitely not puppy proof so after carrying him into her garden, I slipped the lead on and we spent time exploring together. He was perfectly OK with it all and really seemed to enjoy a new and different environment. He had to sniff every single plant and all of the lawn. I couldn’t persuade him to have a wee though; he saves that for my lawn.

He cut out the evening meal a few days ago. He lost all interest in it, so I stopped putting it down. He does have a little bit of food though, from his Kong.

We have spent a little time working on some commands such as sit and so on, but classes start next week so we have done nothing seriously. He comes when called, but, of course, that has not been tested in the “real world” where there are other more interesting things. He’s learnt that at meal times, every time I put his food down, I call him by name, even if he’s standing there. So he probably thinks the word Lewi means food, not him. He’s quite good on leave and no as well, probably because they have been said with passion. The little “marking” puddles which appeared last week have virtually disappeared but the day the workmen were in the back garden was an exception, though he can hardly be blamed for that.

Interestingly, the learning has been 2 way, I have definitely learnt to understand the meaning of his little communications, whether the yap means, I want to play, or go out or “where are you – I can’t see you”.