It’s hard to believe Missy has been with us for 6 months, but she has. She is developing into a confident companion with a definitely playful and goofy personality.
Six months on, Missy is becoming comfortable in the neighborhood and is often out front on walks, is learning to visit with neighbors, and to be more comfortable around novel sights and sounds. She’s eager to go for walks and on rides to do errands. She still has mixed feelings about strangers. She’ll visit with some but is shy with others.
Missy has become quite the terrorist at the fence. She’s taken to chasing joggers but not walkers, and kids with wheels: bikes, skate boards, scooters, if they’re not walking, she’ll chase them. The kids have figured out that the fence is good so they largely ignore her. We are working on “calm dog”. I teach that at the door so they’ll stop bouncing and squirming to have leads hooked up to walk. They’re pretty motivated to go out so it is easy to teach. To my surprise, if I tell her “calm dog” as a neighbor walking a dog approaches, she’ll stay calm for much of the approach but she’s still getting excited once they reach the corner and are along side the fence. I think it will come with time.
Missy has become a frenzied digger. The photo above is of the hole she dug where there was once an aucuba. The landscapers moved it for me as part of a general back garden make over. They filled the hole with nice soft top soil which is now scattered. The plan is to make a boarder of paving tiles, put a layer of rock in the bottom, and add some sand on top so that they have a nice clean, dry nest for sunbathing.
Missy is determined that that is her hole. She’s taken to doing some frenzied digging, giving it a heavy marking, and back filling it a bit. Stinking Nick better not dare trespass on her hole.
Missy is playing less fetch but there are clearly times when she needs a ball thrown for her either in the back garden or in the house. The red ball in the photo is a favorite. It has a soft ribbed design that makes it fun to carry, toss, and snatch on the fly. This got quite animated one evening at sunset and included running yard-spanning figure eights. Missy always sat in the back racing, but probably because it was boring. She’s sure acting like she would have been a super coursing dog. She really loves chasing her ball and playing at it.
Dismal Manor Dispatches 