And the gold medal for hurdles goes to...

GATSBY LeBLANC!!

Yup...he's totally London bound in 2012. We bought Gatsby this neat-o pen to use to contain him during the day, so that he'll have enough room to walk around and play with his toys, but not be able to scratch up the walls.

Unfortunately, it won't be here until next week. So, to help keep him under control, we put him in our spare room that doesn't have a bed in it and put up a baby gate to keep him in.

So at lunch Brian went home to see how he was doing and make sure he didn't need to go on a short walk.

Therefore, he was quite surprised when he walked in and Gatsby was chilling downstairs. Yup, he totally scaled the 26 inch baby gate, completely unscathed, and spent the rest of the morning exploring the house. Brian quickly realized that it was futile to put him back because he'd just jump out again and might hurt himself (remember: he still has stitches from his surgery). So, instead, Brian put the gate at the top of the stairs and just let Gatsby chill downstairs all afternoon.

When I came home, he was laying on the very top stair beside the baby gate taking a nap. He then got so super excited and spent the rest of the early evening going crazy and playing. Very cute. Not nearly as much humping today, but he's a bit rough when he plays, so we're working on taming that down and playing nice (it should also help when we start our PetSmart obedience class in a few weeks).

He also stayed by himself for about 3o minutes when I went to pick up my dinner. I tried to take him with me in the car, but he freaked out and didn't want to ride. In hindsight, I realize that it's probably just too stressful to do any driving for him right now because he has no idea where he's going and if he'll get to come back home.

Gatsby and I also had a very nice walk this morning, for about an hour to help burn off some energy! (Oh yeah, and he slept really well last night! He cuddled up between us in bed and slept the whole night through except for a few minutes around 4 a.m.)

Now you're probably thinking...if Gatsby could scale the baby gate, he can probably scale the baby pen too. Yup, that's what we're thinking too. So, it will be going back to Amazon when it arrives :-)

And we've decided that we're going to crate train him. After reading a lot about it and getting recommendations from people, it seems like a good idea and really appeals to dogs' native "den" instincts. If you don't believe me, google "crate training" and there are tons of recommendations from many reputable organizations (SPCA, Humane Society, etc.). It's been a hard thing for Brian and me to accept, but we've pretty much figured out that we have to think about it like a dog and not like people.

Fortunately, next week I start working from home twice a week (Wednesdays and Fridays), so there will only be two days in a row that he'll be home by himself. On the other days, he can run around and chill while I work. We just want to make sure to eliminate any temptation for him to get in trouble and we want to establish ourselves as in charge and him as not-dominant. In doing so, it should help him chill out a bit when he plays and stop the humping :-)

BTW, he's now destroyed a second toy.

Toys - 0; Gatsby - 2 (although he does have two toys that he hasn't destroyed yet--we'll see how that turns out after tomorrow)

Oh yeah, and we're getting sod tomorrow! They came today and dug up our yard and all the weeds (even the back yard where they had previously seeded) and put the hydraseed down again in the back. This is good news because we've pretty much sucked at the yard thing so far, so it's nice to start anew.

The bad news though is that they cut our phone line with the back hoe (not so good!), so if you need to call us, call our cells until you hear otherwise. Hopefully, BellSouth can get it fixed quickly. Centex will then reimburse us for the wire reconnection.

And, finally, Shaba Shabu has really good sushi...but they have the absolute hottest wasabi paste that I've ever had (not the stuff the put on the side--the green liquid-y stuff that goes on a wasabi roll). I was literally crying so hard. It was fantastic! (I love that quick, unbearable pain that ends immediately.) :-)

Oh yeah, and some new Gatsby pictures are up and linked on the left side of the blog.