OK – SO Alf has just turned 1 years old. Yeah – got that – 1 year old – just turned one – getting to be a grown up – testing his boundaries – doing grown up doggie stuff. SOOOOO – past the nerve tingling, gut wrenching puppy tricks then?
Yeah – Right – – – SOOOO Wrong!!!!!
Bring on the shoes, books and toilet roll!!!

I have been struggling to get my head round the shoes issue for the past couple of weeks. I have lost 2 pairs of shoes (one was my good pair that I was hoping to get at least another year out of) – a pair of cheepie old slippers – and the old goat has lost a pair of crappie canvas shoes. I understand that behavior in babies – lost loads of shoes when Wills was a pup – big people smells and teething!!! ( We don’t ‘Teethe’ as a 1 year old???)
Add to the mix – we have now just discovered toilet rolls – and newspapers – and scrumpled paper – and balls of wool.
Oh – I get it – I know the ‘whys’ – at 3 months old – NOT 12 months.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place here. You can’t tell a dog with anxiety off in the ‘normal’ way – in ‘theory’ you have to praise the good and distract from what you don’t want them to do with other things.
Bless him – it’s as if we have hit the reset button and now he is starting as a baby puppy – he is soooo funny.
We are still having house training issues – food issues – street / people issues – but every week it is like we have a new animal, learning new skills and coping with the world in his weird way of thinking – but we have baby steps of learning to cope and deal with it rather than bullying the animal into repression/submission. It takes waaaay longer – but is much healthier for the dog – and he is such a superstar!!
Oh – and – by the way – he has just run off with a wooden spoon from – somewhere – no idea where he found that one!!!!