What happened to the Puppy?!?! Stats update

After the last six hectic weeks of football and work the whole family woke up one morning to the realization that our little puppy wasn't so little anymore! Turns out we now own a Young Dog!
So the new stats are:
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Blonde
Feet: Large
Weight: 46 lbs
Neck: 16"
Chest: 26"
Length (Nose to base of tail): 36"
Tail: 10"
Favorite Sport: Playing with the neighbors cat in the evening
Favorite Daily Activity: Sleeping
Favorite Dog Playmate: Bernie (still and probably always!)

Winston is learning a couple of new tricks including how to jump up on his hind legs at the command "Up" and he is finally getting "Bring the ball" which makes playing fetch much easier for the person throwing the ball. He eats 3 to 4 cups of food a day, plus a variety of treats, usually as many as he can con people into giving him!

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Since Winston's favorite hobby seems to be sleeping, an entry on the topic seems germane.

No one has actually counted the number of hours that Winston spends sleeping, but unless he has figured out a way to tunnel out of his crate at night ala Hogan's Heros (wouldn't suprise me much), it is significant! He generally prefers to sleep on the family room floor, preferably with something that belongs to his Boy. In a pinch, the kitchen floor is good too, particularly in the middle of whatever traffic route is currently most in use.

Winston picks a particular position for the nap, and most of the time stays with it through out (unless rudely awakened for some reason, say a touchdown on tv). While most of the time the position is fairly usual in a dog, say Nap Position #1:









or Nap Position #2:















Other positions are more, shall we say creative? Such as Nap Position #5:


and the "in crate" variant of position #5 that results from the more limited space:



We believe that these more creative positions are related to his love of having his belly rubbed. He hopes that while he is napping, someone will jsut stop by and give him a quick belly rub, and he wants to be ready so he doen't miss it. Even a good nap takes second place to a belly rub!

In a related note, we saw a "Life is Good" T-shirt at our local outdoor store Trail House (Market Street in downtown Frederick) that showed a a boy with a yellow dog laying on it's back at the boy's feet. The caption said "Sunny side up!" AS a result, we are trying to teach Winston to roll over on his back at the command "Sunny side up", but so far we have met with limited success.

Anyway, to top off the sleeping stuff, Winston snores worse than anyone else in the family! So badly in fact that Mom cannot sleep in the same room with him, and we have discussed changing his name to Chainsaw! Ah well, such are joys of dog ownership.

Escape Artists in Training

Our young, would be Houdini's, Winston and Bernie, spent much of October learning and finally UN-learning how to be escape artists!
The two have always been able to slip under the chainlink fence between their respective yards, but they finally discovered that they could also slip through into yet another neighbor's backyard in the same way. The neighbors are friendly so probably no real crisis right? Wrong. It turns out that the third neighbors gates were not quite dog proof!

After repeatedly discovering the intrepid duo wandering the neighborhood in search of tasty morsels to eat and small giggling children to lick, it was summarily decided that something had to be done before we had very expensive road pizza and a number of broken hearts. Bernie's owner Bob bought a wad of ground stakes and some additional mesh to seal up the gaps, and that has done the trick... for now.

The boys can still visit back and forth between each others yards, but are now limited to just the two yards instead of the third plus the whole neighborhood. I am sure it will not be long beforethey find a new route, and one of us will pull up to find them out in the street, harassing the skater boys again!

... ummm, so we can't play in the street anymore, because ... Why?