September 9, 2013

A.J. had a good early morning. Now he’s crazy.

He woke me up around 6:15. I got up and let him out, waited 5 minutes, then let him in again. He laid down on his bed and went back to sleep. (Well, he didn’t go right to sleep. His foot still hasn’t healed, so I put his sock on him the night before. It was still dark when I let him out so I didn’t notice the sock had fallen off. So he spent a long time when he came in licking at his foot. Then he went back to sleep.) He stayed put until almost 7:30. I was so glad to have that little bit of extra sleep. Unfortunately that caused me to run into a time of day where the sidewalks and the parking lot I use to walk A.J. are pretty busy. So I decided to take the morning off (hence the “now he’s crazy” part of this blog intro).

I got up and fed A.J. After eating he found a bug in the house and played with it until it was dead, then went outside. He was his usual crazy self when he came back in. I was sitting at the table reading the paper, listening to A.J. run around the living room. I could hear is collar jingling away as he ran back and forth….Wait a minute: I never put his collar on him this morning. Sure enough, there he is running around happy as can be with his collar in his mouth.

So far this morning we’ve had to “leave it” for the collar, his blanket, a houseplant, a chair, and the geranium outside. (He had a field day with the geranium yesterday. It’s on the table now, but he had his feet up looking at it. Yesterday I also found half a dozen slightly-chewed screw covers that he’d pulled off the patio table.)

Last night we tried some nose work, where I put a little bit of peanut butter on a toy, hide it, then tell him to find it. He liked it. It’s a good exercise in learning the “Wait” command. He’ll have to get better at that before I can make the game more challenging.

Now he’s outside again looking for some new way to entertain himself. I’m sure he’ll be back in soon with his next “leave it.”