Austin Needs Puppies!

Had a fairly quiet Christmas break. I brought a couple of books to read, including one from the Austin library. The Cutie, by one of my favorite authors, Donald E. Westlake, as published by one of my favorite publishers, Hard Case Crime.

But while the cases may be hard, the books themselves are not, and so The Cutie fell victim to the wrath of the new Fierce Corgi, Wylie, who fished it out of my luggage and dismembered it.

Amazon tells me that the book sells for $7.00 plus shipping. So I figured the Austin library would charge about ten dollars or so to replace it.

Nope. Seventeen dollars and seventy-four cents. A ten dollar markup for processing.

With the Austin library cutting back on hours due to lack of funds, maybe they should just start importing and distributing puppies to their customers. The resulting processing fees should more than make up the difference.

Officially Smart

Wylie had his graduation match last night from puppy obedience. He goes to Joyce Morgan's school at Austin Canine Central. The puppy class is nine weeks learning basic heeling, sit-stay and down-stay, recall on leash, and a sit for examination. And also, of course, it's for some basic puppy socialization. Wylie's been having a few issues with his down-stay (three minutes is a long time for a puppy), but last night he managed to hold it together pretty well, and got 87 points out of 100 on his final exam, which was good enough to get his first blue ribbon.

Now it's on to intermediate class, and hopefully more blue ribbons in the future.

Wylie Update

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Originally uploaded by Bill Vollers

Wylie is now 12 weeks old. He's definitely getting bigger, and he's starting to lose some of his puppy fuzz in favor of some actual fur. Still has the same sharp puppy teeth, but he is starting to get a little more selective about what he'll use them on (i.e. not so much on my arms).

I was planning on starting him in puppy class after the Fourth, but I may have another emergency business trip (back to Barcelona), so I may or may not have to delay until August or even September. But he's already showing some trainability - we've added "in the cage" to his vocabulary, and that's a good one to have.

Welcome Wylie

Been almost a month since my last posting, mostly due to being incredibly busy at work. However, amongst all of the madness, I have finally managed to bring home a new puppy. Meet Wylie:

This will be a new experience for me - he's only ten weeks old, and I didn't get Bailey until she was over nine months old. He's actually not doing too bad on learning - he's already staying in his crate without crying or peeing for hours at a time, and he's already claimed the kitchen as his sleep zone when he's not busy with other things (which is where I was going to have him stay while housetraining). He also hits the potty pretty quickly once he gets outside, so I haven't had to hang around much waiting for him to go.

But - he isn't housetrained. He doesn't know to ask to go outside, and if he's not in his crate or his pen, he'll just go wherever he is. The pee-pads are so far just great things to try to chew on, rather than pee on. So he still has some learning to do there.

Also, he's still just on his razor-sharp puppy teeth. I've found a few puppy-strength chew toys for him, which are his favorite toys so far. But he also is happy chewing on fingers, toes, arms, pants legs, etc. He so far hasn't done much damage to rugs or furniture, but that will likely come at some point (hopefully, just a $3 rug to start with). There will be a steady stream of puncture marks on my hands and arms until the adult teeth start coming in.

So far, he seems like he's going to be a smart boy. He definitely remembers things (like what he was trying to chew on a few minutes earlier when I took it away from him). He also definitely gets into a "Fierce Corgi" attitude when he's prevented from chewing on what he wants. But he's smart enough to know he doesn't want to hang around outside when it's 101 degrees, so at least he's got some basic sense, too.

Puppy class starts in a few weeks. So time to start studying, Wylie!