Nearly normal

There's a story...

Duncan has spent this week transitioning from invalid to nearly normal puppy. He loves playing in the backyard (more on this below!) and is starting to get the idea of walking nicely on his leash around the neighbourhood. On Friday, we had a bonus on our walk when he met little Sammy. Kerry, in her crotchety-old-lady phase, considered cute little Sammy to be an annoying little pup. Now Sammy seems to feel the same way about Duncan. When we parted company, Sammy's nice curly white coat had a couple of new muddy paw prints on it, but he was very polite about the young whippersnapper - possibly because said whippersnapper is already nearly as big as he is!

Have I mentioned that Duncan has something of a stick fetish? He started with twigs and small branches trimmed from the Christmas tree, but he's working up to bigger things. This was one of the treasures he dragged into the house this week. It cost me quite a big treat to bribe him away from it, and even then I had to move fast to get rid of it before he came back looking for it.

The biting that I mentioned last week has improved quite a bit. A lot of it was just frustration, and as his leg improves and he's allowed to do more, his nipping is falling off to more normal puppy levels. Normal teething puppy levels, that is! Aunt Marnie suggested suggested a nice cold carrot. It took a few tries before he was willing to try it, but after a while, he quite like it:

He's not a neat eater, though. In fact, he may not have actually eaten any of it:

And that picture of the soggy puppy up at the top of the post? That's from this morning's playtime in the back yard, when he fell into the pool. Yup. Fell into the pool. He's pretty much cured... Fortunately, the water on the cover was solidly frozen (except for all of the rain on top), so he was fine and able to scramble out with a bit of help from Daddy, but he was a cold and dripping mess when they came back in. A couple of towels and a stuffed Kong in his crate completed the recovery.