Week 8
Demolition Report. Hall carpet, lift near door, remove and shred underlay. Completed successfully. Downstairs cloakroom, unroll toilet roll, shred and scatter through hall. Completed successfully. Spare telephone, carefully stretch front leg through gap in stair-gate, pull phone through gate, take to cage in kitchen to avoid detection, chew through wires removing plug and handset. Completed successfully.
In puppy class this week, we were learning about walking with a loose lead. It’s not really the best environment to practice as with 5 other puppies around, the distractions were too much to resist. Lewi spent a fair bit of time with the trainer as he was a good pupil for demonstrating how to deal with a puppy who is easily distracted. He did have one nasty scrape with Barney again, but I was pleased (secretly) to see Barney get into scrapes with 2 others. Proving, to me anyway, that it’s not my Lewi who’s the naughty one. I picked up lots of tips and we have had much calmer walks, ok I do have to keep reversing direction, but it does mean we can get to the “dog field” more quickly, and spend more time there. More about that in a moment. Lewi had an extra lesson this week. On Sunday, we had a session in a large enclosed paddock. Just Lewi, me, the trainer and her 3 red setters. We were doing off lead work. It was an eye opener and great fun. Firstly, I must say, his behaviour was perfect – well almost. The main point that came across was that the only bar to him going off lead (in a safe place of course) is my confidence. He ran free – a really exciting sight. He came (usually) when called and offered a smelly liver and garlic treat, and if that didn’t work straight away, I just turned and walked away, he soon came. He even had a splash in the dew pond with the other dogs, and of course a paddle through the mud.
The next morning, we went for our walk to look at the water levels in the river and stopped to talk to a woman walking her 12 week old retriever. She told me of the dog field. A fenced off piece of land which had originally been planned for allotments when they built the estate 20 years ago. On Tuesday we visited it. It is perfect. It has a fence around it, and a hedge round the fence. So we could have a fun time off lead, practicing returns and just playing fetch with a throwing toy. Luckily, it’s empty at the time I go as I would feel a bit of a fool calling him back, crouched down, calling Lewi, Lewi, Lewi in a high pitched voice waving my arms out at my side, if anyone could see.
He has learnt that he is a Finnish Spitz and is practising barking at any bird that settles in the garden trees. The best time for this is early morning or late at night. Not sure what to do about this, it’s natural behaviour for the breed, but not making me very popular with the neighbours. A question for the trainer I think.
Had a bit of excitement on Monday night. I had just fallen asleep, a few minutes to midnight when the phone rang, as did my mobile. It was the Environment Agency. A flood warning, telling me to act now, taking pets and valuables upstairs. I live right on the edge of the flood zone, a one in two hundred years risk, and so I get all the warnings, but when the floods come, they never get anywhere near me. Normally, I just ignore them and then go out for a walk to look at the river and see how the water levels are. This was the first that I have received though since Lewi arrived. I didn’t want to move him and his cage and everything upstairs if it was the usual false alarm, but wanted to make sure he was safe. The compromise was to move myself downstairs and sleep on the settee, so that if the waters did reach here, I would be able to move him either upstairs or just a few houses along the road out of the flood zone. When I say sleep on the settee, I meant to say curl up uncomfortably on it, every move or sound I made, he heard which disturbed him and so me. Tuesday was a long hard day.