Puppy Progress – 1 Year Old!

1 YEAR OLD!

How has it been a year already?! A whole year? HOW!? 

Today little (little no more!) Doug turned a whole year old! Bonkers! I, of course bought a cake for the occasion – it wouldn’t be a birthday without a cake!.. Any excuse for cake. 😉 As well as cake there was balloons and dog treats and toys and walkies, what more could a dog want? A lovely dog friendly spoilt puppy rotten day!

So, updates! I think it’s been a whole 6 months since my last puppy update – not a great deal more has changed really. He’s obviously completely toilet trained now, but he’s still an aggressive chewer! We bought an antler chew which are so hard-wearing they take months to get through; but of course, he would much rather rip his toys apart until there’s stuffing flying across the room. There’s just something about destroying soft toys that he likes so much.. I don’t know what, but he absolutely loves it! It’s at the point now where he has so few soft-toys left because they’re all destroyed! I bought him a toy crocodile not so long ago which was made from a very resilient strong material (so the label told me) specifically made for mad-chewers…. It was in pieces by the end of the day. My wallet needs a break.

Other than toys, he does quite enjoy chewing other things too.. clothes, bags, you name it. We work around this quite well by simply not leaving anything in his reach that we don’t want him to chew. On the other hand, when he goes to Grants parents house, he goes crazy – Apparently he ran off with some fags, some glasses, a pack of tissues and a prescription, all in the space of about an hour. One very naughty pup. We also had a man come to give a quote about something-or-other and I glanced down and saw Doug gnawing on this man’s bag! Luckily no damage was done, it was a tough-old-bag, thank god!

I do this we need to step this training up a bit. But all in all, he’s a well mannered friendly little pup with a whole lot of love to give. Not to mention oodles of energy to cause havoc! He’s still very cautious around other dogs, but I think that’s just his personality; he’s a bit shy I suppose. In many ways it’s a much easier trait to deal with than a dog who might run leaps and bounds across a field to greet another dog. So really it’s pretty handy – one less training problem to deal with.

He’s now fully grown too, probably a smidgen taller than Todd but much much lankier so he still seems a bit smaller. His tail is fully bushy and he still hasn’t had a haircut – Grant forbids me to get him one, he loves his long-haired messy look, but it does take a lot of looking after! Long-haired dogs are prone to their hair getting seriously matted and knotted, so he needs regular bathing, special anti-knotting combs, detangling sprays, you name it. Not to mention the amount of malting hair all over the place, AND the amount of hoovering that has to be done. But these are all the things you agree to when you get a little hairy dog, and he’s certainly worth it!

Here’s a few pictures of his year-long journey in life… Happy Birthday Doug!