Progress of the beast

Seven weeks with our new companion seem to have, quite literally, trundled by. I knew having a puppy would be hard work but, to be quite honest, I didn't think it would be quite so tiring. We've been very fortunate I'm sure, managing to have Belle toilet trained almost from the start, sleeping for most of the night in her cage and accepting the same confinement when we have to go out, leaving her behind. She's continued to grow at a frightening rate and we're beginning to wonder just how big she's likely to get.

Last weekend we found the first puppy teeth on the carpet, hopefully signalling the start of the end of the biting. Belle has been responding to our controlled play and whilst she still enjoys a good gnaw on arms and legs if she can get away with it, at least she now has some appreciation of how hard she can bite down and for it still to be fun. Her chewing on the furniture, woodwork and table legs has just about been brought to an end and her barking always seems to have good reason.

The boy should be awarded a "NoBelle!" prize for his attempts to instil some discipline into our girl. It seems she interprets his shorter (than adult) stature as meaning he is more of an equal, seeing this as an invitation to chase, wrestle and bite him. He keeps plugging away reasserting his authority and, sometimes even through teary eyes, I can see he really likes her.

Our back garden has taken a bit of a beating in recent weeks. Belle likes nothing better than depotting the hard work of my green-fingered wife and digging holes in the lawn that seem to be joining up (imagine puppy-scale WWI trenches!). With hindsight, Horiko ("堀子" meaning "digger girl") would not have been a bad choice of name. She doesn't mind getting dirty either and we've had to hose her down more than a couple of times. Sadly, she thinks this is a great game and I'm sure she gets herself dirty just to play it.

Other moments of horror have included finding Belle gently chewing on the "skin" case for my iPod Nano 3G, having somehow removed it from the device all by herself. Amazingly, neither the case nor the iPod had any visible damage but for the thick layer of canine saliva that had to be carefully washed away.

Puppy training will continue this weekend after it was rained off last Sunday. We're going to try to accelerate her learning, particularly her walking to heel which is not quite(!) there yet.