More Abbey week ending 30 May 10

Abbey is growing rapidly and has moved out of the baby phase into puppyhood. She now weighs almost 6 lbs and just finished her last shots yesterday. She is all teeth and gangly legs. Always ready to play.

She started puppy kindergarten (her recess video below) and I must admit she is not the star but a winning second (did I mention there are only two in the class?). However number one is a fluffy lap dog breed that sits around and looks cute. MY dog however has a veritable ocean of untapped skills and abilities. If you need any badgers or rabbits hunted, just call on her. No badgers around you say? Well, she could follow a days old underground maze to locate a trapped rat. Not high on my list of desirable traits but it is apparently very highly thought of in the the working dog world. I'm considering training her to do some agility trials with those very high 4" gates. But, she is alert, inquisitive, interested in everything and fearless. Besides that, she has the cutest face you could ever want to see. Unfortunately, interested and fearless makes training a tinsy tiny bit harder. At the "watch me" command she pretty much responds with "why should I, I see you all the time and look at all these other interesting things to explore.". She has "leave it" down cold but once she stops the undesirable action and gobbles the training treats down, she turns right around and goes back to that action. Not what was supposed to happen. She is a champion at the "sit" command however. "Come" and "stay" are not yet registering as any known word, or are merely being cheerfully ignored. Abbey does have a new fun game though. We call it elevator. She has learned to go up the stairs all by herself and is justifiably proud of this accomplishment. Unfortunately, she has not achieved the going down yet. She can manage one stair leading to flat ground by launching herself off of it with all fours going airborne, but this method does not work on more than one or even two stairs. So, she manages to get to the stairway landings just before the larger stair runs and then sits down and barks for us to come get her, private elevator service! She thinks this is so great a game that she will do it several times in a row after finding some minor excuse to go up the stairs, such as making sure the closet door containing the contraband shoes is still closed, or making sure her bed and night time toys are still safely upstairs. Sometimes Bill and I will hear the "elevator call bark" and wait to see if the other one of us responds :-) She has also discovered the game beloved by every dog I have ever known. When she is happily sitting on the couch or bed next to us, chewing busily on a bone or toy, she will move slowly towards the edge until "plop", said toy goes over onto the floor. Then she stares mournfully at you until you stop what you were doing (like writing this blog) and pick it up for her for the 19th time. That game never seems to loose its appeal!