EATING & PLAYING & DESTROYING! OH MY! – 09.26.2010

It’s been almost a week since my last post and much has gone on in Orso-world.  As usual, he’s been going out with us and getting to know new people.  His down command has come along beautifully and he responds to it immediately now – the dozens of puppy treats have come in handy!  In our house, Orso pretty much has to work for everything – food, praise, playtime, etc.  So do Mouse and Luna, by the way.  Up until now, sitting on command has gotten Orso just about anything he wanted, so did speaking on command.  Introducing the down command was tricky because he couldn’t understand why sit or speak – without solicitation of the action – wasn’t getting him his dinner or toy.  He picked up quickly the down command as soon as he figured out that it is the command of the week around here.  Now he lays down for EVERYTHING!!!  He is too smart for his own good!  See a cute photo below of Orso working on his down command this morning, with Luna’s help of course: 

This morning, as I took Orso out for his first potty run of the day, I looked down and was shocked at how he looked.  He was THIN!  Bones out!  When did this happen?  This puppy eats three times a day – large quantities of food – and gets an endless supply of treats throughout the day!  He must be going through a growth spurt or something.  The decision was made to increase his food intake once again.  He has been eating 1.5 cups of dry food, plus some raw food mixed in here and there, three times daily.  We went up to 1.75 cups of dry food per meal, starting with today’s breakfast.  We definitely don’t want a chubby puppy, but we don’t want him to look like we starve him either!  Orso was very happy with his extra portion, evidenced by his ability to inhale his food in under a minute.  We are also ordering him a slow feeder bowl to slow him down a bit.

On the playing front, Mouse has started to feel extremely comfortable playing with Orso.  Unfortunately, we suspect that Mouse did not spend too much time before we rescued him socializing with other pups because his playing style is a little too assertive sometimes.  Orso is learning to understand that Mouse is only playing and isn’t as nervous to play with him anymore.  He even paws at Mouse’s face now and barks at him!  Lots of good improvements in the Mouse-Orso department.  On to Luna…  Poor Luna.  She deserves an award, a lifetime supply of treats, a statue in her honor – anything that will truly honor her as the best play partner in town.  She has been so patient with Orso, so kind and motherly!  Below is a short clip of Luna and Orso playing tug with one of the gazillion ropes floating around our house – Luna won this game because of her oh-so-scary looking teeth.

In the end, though, Mouse took possession of the tug for himself!  See below:

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, a lot has been going on this past week.  On Wednesday, we took Orso with us to the Grove to see our jeweler and run some other errands.  We ended up eating at Che Tito’s in Kendall with him.  This was our second time there with him and everyone remembered him.  They were also kind enough to set up a table for him outside since there was nowhere to sit when we got there.  He behaved great, but we started noticing that his right ear was looking a little droopy.  We dismissed it as him having a lazy day and didn’t stress about it.  On Thursday morning, his right ear was completely flopped over when he woke up.  It started coming back up by mid-morning, with the occasional flop here and there.  At this point, he had our attention big time.  By Friday morning, the ear was all out rebelling against us.  It was totally down with the occasional up and perky stance.  We were now pretty stressed.  We don’t understand how the ears stand perfectly for almost a week and then voila! they fall down again!!!  How does that happen??!!!  And we are not stretching the truth, check out the video below:

What we don’t get is how it can be floppy one minute and perfectly straight the next!  We agreed to reach out to Diane for some advice on Saturday.  By the time Saturday rolled around, it truly had evolved in ear hell around here.  The right ear flipped inward and the left ear decided to join in on the party, see below:

Now we were REALLY freaking out and began to torment Diane via email.  Poor woman, I swear she must think we are nuts!  She tried her best to console us and told us to get them taped up again or use Dr. Scholl’s Mole Foampad to keep the ear standing, which we did immediately, see below:

Orso was not impressed by this new form of ear torture.  He demonstrated his unhappiness by shaking his head relentlessly for what felt like an eternity.  When he wasn’t shaking, he was scratching.  It sucked to see him like this.  Just really sucked.  The Mole Foampad had to be adhered to the inside of his ear using DermaBond because the adhesive that it comes with is not strong enough to stay on.  Poor guy, it has to feel so uncomfortable.  I spent the whole night listening for sounds of him fussing with it and kept having thoughts of waking up to a puppy with raw ears from scratching so much.  Luckily, this was not the case when I woke up this morning.  His ears were in one piece and the padding was still attached.  Thank you, puppy ear gods!

As a matter of fact, he woke up in good spirits and ready to play, go through his obedience drills and destroy things when no one was looking:

In particular, he – along with Mouse & Luna – decided to have a toilet paper party while I left the house.  These videos show the remnants of 3 perfectly good rolls of toilet paper: