Gatsby Update

We really do still exist.

We've been super busy with Gatsby, work, hockey, and football!!

Things are going well. We are working with him on some basic training stuff (sit, down, leave it, stay, and walking on a loose leash.) He's a pretty quick learner, but he's not great at applying it all the time. In the mornings, he'll walk with me for about 20 steps right beside me without pulling and then when I stop, he'll sit so that I can get him a treat. It's very, very cute. He can do that about 10 times and then he's brain gets fried and he's just like, "Give me the treat, woman!" He's either thinking that or, "It's 5:30 in the damn morning, I'm cold, hungry, and want to go back to sleep." Interestingly, I'm usually thinking the same thing. :-)

Our typical schedule is that Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, we're up at 5:30 and we go on a 45-60 minute walk and then he comes back and eats breakfast. After breakfast, I'm back upstairs to get ready to work and Gatsby takes a nap. He's usually asleep when I come back down to leave and he usually just lifts his head when I say, "Bye Gatsby, have a good day, I love you." Brian leaves for work a little before 9 a.m. and Gatsby goes out with him for a quick potty break and then he gets the day to himself. I'm usually back home around 4:45 and we go out, he eats dinner at 5 and then we play until Brian comes home. He then goes outside a few times during the evening.

On work-from-home days and weekends, we sleep until 7 and then he goes out for a quick potty break and breakfast. And then he goes out at various times throughout the day.

He rarely has any in-house accidents when we get up at 5:30 and for the past two nights he's made it until 7 a.m. He's also good during the day, unless I'm not home by 4:45...he's basically at max capacity by then, so if I'm a few minutes late, then it's all over :-) On Tuesdays when I tutor after work, Brian comes home at lunch to take him out.

We have a "puppy" gate at the bottom of the stairs and he stays downstairs. He's always fine with Brian and I going up at bedtime and he's fine during the day if just one of us goes upstairs, but he is not pleased if both of us are upstairs during "wakey" time :-)

He loves, loves, loves any type of bone or chewy thing and he can chew on a bone for (literally) 2 or 3 hours at a time. He also loves his red "plush" squeaky bone and a rope "ball and loop" toy that he loves for tug-of-war or to "wrestle" with. He also seems to love his fleece bed, but only because he likes to tear holes in it and pull out all the cotton stuffing. He loves to either wrestle or run around with the bed, or spend time "dominating" (i.e. humping) it. It's pretty funny...we're just glad that's the only thing he humps!

He's good for the most part when my family comes to visit, but he doesn't really know how to deal with me not giving him 100% attention when he wants it. He's getting better, but it's still something to work on. He loves to climb up on my lap to be petted or to lick my face! (Evidently he likes my chap stick.) He's also (slowly) improving at his bite inhibition and "mouthing." But I've figured out that if I can convince him to just lick my hand, then he doesn't want to mouth it. He's also FASCINATED by anything electronic. He loves cell phones and wireless mouses, which makes me wonder if they emit some type of high frequency that he can hear.

He's also beginning to become braver when faced with new things, but if he's not sure about something, he'll stretch back from it as far as possible and if he's too skittish, then he'll just bark at it (he tends to do this when a toy gets tossed near something weird [fridge, dishwasher, etc.]). From the way he reacts to stuff, it seems likely that he had a pretty rough life before he came to live with us, but I think we're slowly getting him shipped into shape, but I think it will be a long process.

All-in-all, it's unbelievably rewarding and it's amazing to me how much we can love him so much in such a short time. He's absolutely adorable :-)

Oh yeah, and he's very proficient at being on his hind legs. He's just tall enough that he can look over the counter and even more so when he does a vertical jump, but he hasn't gotten anything off any counters....

...yet.

He's had two vet appointments and the only main concern so far is that he's too skinny, so we've been working hard at helping him to gain weight, but it's definitely hard to get him to gain weight. The first time we went he was 21 lbs and then the next time (2 weeks later) he was at 19 lbs. Although, we're not sure if the first time he stayed completely still on the scale. The vet first had us giving him 1/2 cup of food twice a day and then when we went for the second appointment we upped it to 3/4 cup of food twice a day. We're hopeful when we go back to the vet this Wednesday that he'll have gained weight. He definitely looks bigger to us and he's a great eater. He must have the world's most insane metabolism. The doctor said that really he should be somewhere around 24-25 lbs, so he has a way to go!!

It's obvious that he's beagle in the face, but we also think that he has some "big, strong" dog blood in him, like greyhound or something because of his skinny build, his unreal strength, and quickness. It is absolutely unreal to see how fast he can run when he's off leash. I'm hoping to get some video of it soon because it's CRAZY. :-)

When we went in early October, the vet told us that he was between 10-11 months old; initially, we thought he was a year old, but when we found that out, we switched him to puppy food to help him get more and more nutrients to gain weight.

Overall, all is well!