Thanksgiving etc.

Happy belated Thanksgiving! Guess it's pretty obvious what I'm thankful for: my amazing pups!

Juno helps with Thanksgiving prep by pre-washing the sweet potato bowl.

Kaline models one of Angel's many coats. I never realized just how many coats we had for her. She'd get so cold in the winter that her teeth would chatter inside the house.

Juno came along to Thanksgiving while Kaline stayed home. She was very good and quite sneaky (in an amusing way). Last year I vested her so she'd go into serious-work-mode, but this year she actually got an invitation, so I didn't. Thus, she was a little more ... lax ... about manners.

Juno supervises dinner prep. A task she is never lax about!

During dinner, I sat across from my mom, who is always Juno's target. She (Mom) is a total softie and all Juno really has to do is look at her sadly and the food starts flowing. I put Juno in a down-stay next to my chair. She'd been there about 10 minutes without moving, so I pretty much stopped paying attention. Well, just before everyone was done eating, Mom was answering some question I'd asked when she suddenly just stopped talking. I figured she'd gotten the hiccups. Nope, my Junebug had stealthily and ever so slowly crawled beneath the table and had finally reached the promised land: Mom's lap. Just plopped her head right there. Everyone laughed.

Juno all smiles after getting a ton of leftover turkey.

Kaline has been working hard on refining his fridge skills. I'm trying to get him to grab the tug on the knot or the rope, but he insists on only grabbing the stringy end in his mouth and using that to get the door open. Whatever floats your boat, little man.

He also did a fun little outing with me and Mom to Stanford Shopping Center. We worked on off-leash down-stays all over Macy's, which he did really well at, hurrah! He whined when he got bored standing around though, and also when we did some "under" practice. At the end we went to dinner at Amici's and he settled after about five minutes and just went to sleep, nicely curled up under the table.

Off-leash down-stay at Macy's.

Whinging away while practicing "under."

Being a good boy at Amici's.

Today of course was our usual Saturday class. Before and after class, I worked with Kaline on "take it" which we started on a couple days ago. He doesn't hold whatever object it is for any great length of time, but we have progressed to me changing where I hold the object out, and having him reach for it. He was almost taking it from ground level after class. Freddie loaned me an adorably teeny obedience dumbbell (cause Juno's is MIA) for Kaline to practice with. We've also practiced with his indestructible blue bone.

The pups sunbathing after class at Borrone's ... I was evil and blocked Juno's sun for the photo. Oops!

OH. Speaking of indestructible. My puppy freaking destroys toys. With shocking speed. He hasn't been allowed squeakies/stuffies of any sort for quite a while. A few weeks ago, he chewed chunks off his tire & rope toy he's had since babyhood, so that had to get chucked. Recently he mangled his baby rope & plastic toy—I chalked that up to the toy being designed for baby pups with baby teeth. No "tuff" toys have survived him, because he knows that the seams are the weak points and shreds the black trimming.

So I bought him a fire hose toy. He was very excited to have it. Fifteen minutes later, he had gnawed off the corner so I had to take it away.

Just enough to put the new toy out of commission.

Then I got him a new, bigger, tougher version of the tire & rope toy, only the tire part was a solid bone shaped piece instead of a ring. He actually helped pick it out at the store. Fifteen minutes after I gave it to him, he was gleefully masticating a chunk of rubber that I had to pry out of his mouth. He's down to a Bento ball that he has an on-off affection for, regardless of whether a cookie is in it, his blue rubbery bone, his antler, and a Nylabone I can't find. Juno is still grumpy that all her stuffies are hidden away for safety. (Except her spider, which lives closed off in Mom's room.) Kaline doesn't understand why his new toys disappear so quickly.

Kaline stares at me across Mom: "PLEASE give me back my fire hose toy!"

If only I could get him to really like Nylabones! You'd think they'd be perfect for him, a powerful chewer, but he will hardly ever choose to work on one. If you hold it for him, he'll humor you. I may get him a new one, simply because nothing else is surviving. I wonder if the stores will take back the not-so-freaking-tough toys he's destroyed ... Poor Kay. He loves soft toys that he can really squash in his mouth, but he just pulverizes them!