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Marley Jane Eaton
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Marley Jane Eaton

Marley

I haven't had time to post anything in awhile. It has been seriously busy around here for the last week. One week ago today we purchased our second boxer puppy. She is fawn with black mask and white markings on her nose, chin, chest and neck, and paws. Very cute weighing in at fifteen pounds and four ounces and will be four months old on the 30th. Jake adores her. They have been playing non stop since she got here and as rough as it looks and sounds I don't think anyone has gotten seriously hurt yet. She hasn't quite figured out house training yet, she is a barker/howler and she wants to chew on absolutely everything. She is pretty much the polar opposite of Jake in every respect. We still like her. It just makes us appreciate Jake that much more.

Every Saturday save for probably two in the last few months has been spent finely honing Jakes obedience skills at the group training class. He has since graduated from puppy kindergarten and has now moved on to an intermediate class. Normally we aren't keen on making robots (i.e. our kids being unschoolers) but for the sake of my sanity and the state of our house Jake has been in training. He seems to be okay with it. He doesn't look like he particularly loves it except for getting to jump on other dogs and sniff a lot of butt but he sure does like the part where people give him pieces of hot dogs and peanut butter dog cookies when he does a certain amount of cooperating. The first leg of training involved no treat training as the trainer's belief is that if you treat train for the basics then the dog is only behaving to be fed and not because he knows he should be good. I agree. I don't like to use candy and treats as a reward for the kids either though I have resorted to it in desperate times. Occasionally, we will tell them that we will take them and let them blow their own money at the store if they are good for a certain amount of time. Anyway... Jake, at fifty plus pounds, is now much easier to walk down the street than he was at twenty pounds of Out Of Control. I hope to have Marley up to speed much sooner than we started with Jake. He was a late bloomer for sure. You should see the seven of us in the Buick (lovingly renamed The Clunker by the kids) going somewhere. It is like a freak show. I love it.

Posted by gwendolyn on April 19, 2005 at 10:32 AM