Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.
Ah, they grow up so fast.
Cute li’l bugger, ain’t he? Of course, what youre not seeing is the entire bottle of Febreeze he made us go through, whats left of my shoes, the countless hours I slept on the floor with him, all the sleep I’ll never get back, the scars I have from his puppy teeth,etc, etc.
“Yeah, yeah…stop talking to me about the labor pain. Show me the baby.”
Ok, three times the size and begining his appetite for destruction:
(Well, he is for personal protection, after all.)
Nowadays? He’s probably north of 50# and he’s still got at least half that much more to gain. His adult teeth are mostly in and he can snap a rawhide bone in half with them like you or I snap a pencil between our fingers. Fingers. Fingers can go missing if he’s of the mind to not be gentle. With great power comes great responsibility and so it is with the battlepuppy. He loves running around here in the Montana snow. Here’s one of him looking like something from a Jack London book. This is probably the last thing a snowshoe hare would see barreling at it:
And fast? He’s fast on his feet, no doubt, but he also has some pretty darn quick reflexes. Once in a while the ‘herd’ part of shepherd comes into play and he’ll nip me in the butt. I’ll reflexively swat at him but I may as well be moving in slow motion. He is fast. Here’s one of him recently haulin’ fur across the tundra:
Now that he’s done teething he has become far more manageable. He’s been given a bit more free reign around the house. At night, rather than sleep in his crate, he can have the run of the house. He usually sleeps on the floor of the living room, which is good since it puts him in a central location to monitor things. My goal was never to have him sleep in his crate..that would be useless. One of his functions is to be an early warning system. If someone rattles the doorknob at 3am I wanna know about it. Thats where Mister Furman comes in… He’s pretty good at staying on top of that sort of thing. He’s also a good set of eyes and ears when we’re out at night. It can be deathly quiet and still, not a sound, and he’ll suddenly stop walking and stare intently down the street. You or I wouldnt see anything but then, blocks away, we’ll suddnely see someone walking down the street or quietly talking on a porch somewhere. Puppy has some excellent situational awareness. The big thing I need to get him started on is defensive behavior. Essentially, if the missus is walking him down the street and someone approaches in a less-than-friendly manner she can give the dog a cue and he does the whole bark-n-lunge thing to scare off whomever. We have a zillion dog books and videos, and theres a local schutzhund group here so I dont think were going to have trouble getting the right kind of training.
In the meantime, he hangs out at the house with us and I take him to the shop with me. More than one person has stopped us on the street and commented on what a great looking dog he is. I guess they dont see a lot of purebred German Shepherds. So, he’s about six months old now and Im finally feeling like the worst part of it is over. I mean, I hope it is. In the meantime, its hard to believe that this enormous sack of fur (who is still growing) looked like this only a few months ago:
