the joys of Vizslabeasts

Aaaah, the milestones we've crossed...

a) the first book whose cover got chewed because we left it on the floor and lost track of His Junior Majesty. Happily it was a book I used to use for work -- as opposed to the beautiful hardcover dedicated to Joel White's beautiful wooden boat designs (that Choya munched in a moment of junior boredom).

b) the first really nasty vomit clean-up. I leave it to your imagination as to what dogs like to find in the woods, eat, and then barf up once they've reached the safety and comfort of home.

c) the first long day in a kennel without peeing. We do both work although we have off-set schedules and there are a couple of days a week that the boys are in their kennels for 8hrs. It's not ideal but we have a neighbour who will let them out a couple of times a day if it seems like we might be longer. But even for a young guy, it's amazing how quickly Jozsi came to understand his crate as a place of quiet and calm (and therefore as good for him as it is us). And he had a good model in His Senior Majesty.

I should point out that we completely adjusted our work schedules, took vacation time, and began gently introducing the kennel to Jozsi to get him on a regular schedule and to minimize any sharp shocks to his vastly expanding, but imminently maleable, puppy brain. As far as the crate goes, we had been gently extending his kennel time over the last three weeks -- even if we didn't actually need to leave the house. He has also been crated during the night, albeit next to our bed, since the day he arrived in the house.

d) selective human memory. No-one likes vomit in the house, but I was gently reminding Meg last night about how much dog-effluent we had to clean up after we adopted His Senior Majesty as a pup. Momo was not an especially difficult pup, but, for example, he used to eat his blankets; by contrast, Joszi has taken vaguely longer to house-train for peeing, but has only half-considered pooping in the house once.

Jozsi goes to see Dr. Arns today to get all his almost-grown-up shots. Dr. Arns is at the Bond Animal Hospital in White Plains. We like her. Which is better.