Hold, inu, hold

Inu just could not wait to get to her food once she sensed that food was on the way to her. She still does not understand that even taking and preparing for food takes time. We decided to teach her to hold on while placing her food bowl in front of her.

As you can imagine, the first few time was a big failure. We had to hold her up tightly between our hands and kept yelling: “Hold, inu, hold.” Inu just did not care for anything else once she saw her food. She would struggle with all forces trying to rush to her food.

After a few practices, inu seemed to be able to hold up a couple seconds before dashing for her food. Sometimes, she would walk around our back trying to get to her food from the other side. Apparently, she understood that we were trying to block her from reaching her food directly. We were very glad even with this small progress. We will need to train her more.

We took inu to central park during the past weekend. It's a well maintained park that allows pets. Surprisingly, inu was the only pet in the morning walking around the ponds.

Inu finished her 7.5 kg puppy dried food in 6 weeks. We bought her first bag of dog food on March 11th and we bought the second one on April 23rd. Let's see how fast inu can finish the second bag. For extra treats, we also bought a can food of beef/chicken flavors for inu. She seemed to like it very much. She kept licking her bowl after finishing the food.

I learned a special medical term for dog lately, Coprophagy, which means “stool/feces eating” in Greek. Copro = feces and phagy = eat. I can't even pronounce it though. Anyway, it's so disgusting seeing inu enjoy eating her stool and she would eat them SLOWLY. I still don't understand why on earth dogs would eat their own stool as it stinks so badly and dogs have better noses than human. Well, may be it smells great for the dogs. While searching the Internet, I found that there is one kind of tablet that can be added to dog food. It is tasteless at the beginning. After going through the digesting system, it makes the stool a very bad (or bitter?) taste. But I sincerely wonder how much more 'bad' could the taste go as the stool itself is unbearable already. Inu, please grow up.

Inu is heavy

We weighted inu again over the weekend and it came out about 5.5 kg. Now she could almost reach the top of my table and I need to watch out any food I put on the table. I could feel that inu has constantly been begging for food in the past few weeks. We tried to teach her to understand 'hold' but it was not successful yet. It was like, I don't care what happens, I must get the food.

On the good side, inu has been doing very well on housebreaking. She has not been doing her business on the house floor for may be 2 weeks by now. On a few instances, inu still remembered to use the cage for pee pee while she was playing. That's very encouraging.

Inu has now learned how to run around in the house to avoid from being caught. Sometimes, she would show her temper by barking back. I was just worry if one day when I try to catch her running around, inu may run out of temper and really bite me. Who knows.

Home alone with inu

I stayed home whole day today with inu. I am crossing my fingers (luckily I still have them) not to pass the bacteria to her. She seemed happier being able to play out of the cage whole day. I did not have the energy to play with inu so she was playing by herself most of the time. After tire playing, she was taking a nap at her usual corner, with eyes half opened? May be she wanted to know what was I doing.

After not seeing inu for 3 days, I was not sure if she still remembered me. Anyway, I felt that she was growing again. I took another measure this morning from front toe to back toe and inu grew again to 82 cm. That’s 8 cm more than the measure I took last time. It sure felt great to see inu growing.

Inu, where's it, go find it

When inu's mind was occupied by food, I would put some treats in her bowl, shut her behind a door, hid the bowl somewhere and made some noises. Then I opened the door and shouted, inu, where's it? Where's it? Go find it, go, go, go...

Inu was still not very good in finding her bowl. She would normally walk (yes, walk only) to the places where I put the bowl before. Good memory though. But I was looking for more excitement and more sniffing job from inu. She would turn to me when she was not able to find her bowl within seconds. I would just indirectly lead her to the bowl. Ah Ni was doing much better in finding all the treats that I hid around the house. Well, inu is still a puppy. I am sure she will do much better when she grows up. She was bred to be the greatest hound dog anyway :).

One month

I just realized that inu has been with us for one full month now. Time sure flies a lot faster than the old easy-going days. I still remember the tiny little timid inu howling for her first night. From accompanying and begging the little inu to eat to eating like no tomorrow now. Even the black shining hair is gradually turning to tan color now. I am sure there are more changes to come for our inu.

Inu went hiking

Inu went hiking with us for the first time on Saturday morning. She responded well to the vaccination a week ago and we thought it was a good time for inu to explore other places beside home.

Inu was reluctant to walk with us at the beginning being at the new place. She sniffed around the area and walked just bit by bit. We sort of pulled and forced her to walk and eventually she started to catch up with our paces.

Along the walking trail, some people would stop and gave inu some petting on the head and played a little bit with inu. Inu was very excited seeing all these strangers, wagging tail fast 180 degree side by side. We were actually a bit jealous about that. Since when inu was so excited when seeing us :|.

We hiked only about a quarter way since inu was panting heavily on the way up. We were afraid that we even needed to hold inu down the hill. Inu was able to regain some energy after drinking our diamond water. It was a great hike and we decided to let inu walk more next time.

We thought inu would be tired after the hike and would at least take some nap during the day. Surprisingly, she seemed to have endless source of energy running around the house whole day. When we were tired, inu still refused to stop playing.

We took a measure for inu again over the weekend from front toe to back toe. Inu grew another 10 cm to 74 cm. It felt great to see inu growing up. She has become more beautiful than ever. We kept crossing our fingers and hoping one day inu would not bite on us so furiously while playing with us.

Housebreaking wise, inu has made great progress. She has not been pooping in the house for more than 2 weeks now. On a few occasions, she would poop in her cage and in the toilet, I guess that's acceptable. Inu peed in the living room only once in the past week when she was playing so excitedly. I guess she forgot that she needed to go until she could not hold anymore. Otherwise, she would walk to her cage to pee most of the time.

Inu has developed a strange behavior lately. When she sees us after being left alone for hours, she appears so excited until cannot hold her pee anymore and would pee right at the spot where we pet her. I remembered D said that ah ni had the same problem before. The solution is not to make them too excited when approaching them after leaving them alone for hours. Well, it's so cruel to do that after thinking the fact that we leave inu in the toilet-cage for 18 hours/day.