Newfies & Sofas - Nurhan

Nurhan's take:

No, this isn't a terrible domestic accident... Strangely enough the little chap still insist on bending himself around things whilst he's trying to sleep... with the one notable exception last week when he swaggered into the living room, whilst I was sitting at the dinning table, he got on the sofa, made himself comfortable and then lay down... for a minute I was waiting for him to kick off his slippers, get his paper out, and take a sip from his tea cup, and that would be him for the night! He did it so naturally that he almost had me convinced that he should be there! It was fantastically cute, and had I not already have had a Newfie, he might have fooled me... Obviously he ignored my verbal protests; so force had to be reverted to... on trying to move him, he did his 'sack of potatoes' impression, making it very hard to relocate him! What got me was where he got the idea from. He's not in the living room unless I am, Maddie hasn't been over for months to teach him bad ways, and it's not even like we have a television in the house where he might have seen this!

Haven't weighed him for awhile but he's getting big... in fact I'll go and grab the scales and see if I can lever him off the floor...

Right he's a sleepy 39 (ish)*  kgs, at five months & one week old.

* not the most accurate scales in the world, so this is correct ball park figure.

Here he is trying to tackle a 'Krypton factor' puzzle... you are supposed to move the sliders to push the treats out... but being a Newfie pup, he's so large that all he needs to do is throw the puzzle around (generally off the furniture) enough and the treats are ejected from the puzzle... much more entertaining!

He's now had his first ticks, and we are trying some stuff that we bought from the pet shop. Normally (okay that's not right), With Karma we got poisonous drops from the chemist that you needed a prescription for, these drops from the pet shop are not as potent and so far have proved to be just as effective.

The little chap has also had 'Kennel' cough. No idea where he got it from as he's not been in a kennel and we don't know of any other dogs who have had this. Karma never had kennel cough, so this was a new one for me. He's better now.

I'm still being mouthed... puppies bite, this is a fact of life, but now he's getting quite impressive teeth on him, and I have to figure out how to get it through to him that he's not allowed to mouth people; especially young kids who don't differentiate mouthing and biting... scare a kid and you end up with a potential adult who is frightened of dogs. He's only doing what comes naturally to pups, and I'm sure that it'll pass as he gets older...  Arh the 'joys' of 'parenthood'!!!

He's tried cocking his leg a couple of times before, but always fell over... today he did it and made it look natural... and he's only five months old!

17th of May coming up... This is Norwegian national day, and marching band season... normally the school bands do a practice march through the areas a week before (and remarkably very few of them are killed by motorists)... This was Kin's first experience of a marching band and to say that he was slightly sceptical would be a mild understatement, as he strained on the leash to run away... Now the human reaction is to comfort him... this is of course 100 % wrong as this then teaches him that his fears are justified. First pass by the band, just ignored him and held the lead as though this was 'business as usual'. Second pass no words but he did get some roast beast treats (no comfort and good experience)... I get to see how well we did next week!

Kin has been one of the few complaining about the great weather. Look out of the front side of the house and you can see snow on the mountains, yet with temperatures up in the 20 ies (degrees centigrade) it's definitely been shorts weather. Now for the occasional long walk I've taken him down to Lille Stokkavann:

Where, just as Karma did he's straight into the water, retrieving balls, sticks, and almost a duck (until the duck noticed!). He's not so co-ordinated and he was pushing one ball further and further out into the lake when I had to call him off (as the water is still too cold for me to venture in without a wet suit on unless I really have to).

As he's still got a puppy coat his coat takes about five hours to dry, unlike the adult coat that takes about 36 hours to dry... this is one (amongst many) very good reasons for not letting him get the idea that he should lie on the sofa!!!