Roll, inu, roll

I thought I wrote how inu learned the roll command. Apparently I forgot. It was on June 11th. We got free papaya but unfortunately, it is not one of our favorite fruits. It took about 2 palm size papayas for inu to learn how to roll her back on the floor. Instead of wasting the papaya by throwing it away, we cut it into many small pieces. To our surprise, inu liked them very much. So I decided to teach inu a new command, roll.

I had to give inu down command before I asked inu to roll by holding her body and pushing her to the side a bit and rolling her back on the floor. Again, to my surprise, Inu adapted the command very fast and she learned to react with the roll command, although not doing it very well at the beginning, in about 10+ practices.

After two sessions of training with papaya, inu learned to roll her back on the floor without having us to give down command first. When I gave command roll firmly enough, inu would lie down on her stomach, then tilt to her site and roll on her back for a round. Then she would be treated with the yummy papaya.

Another advantage of training with papaya was that inu pooped more on the next 2 days. It was a great experience.

Inu's socializing day

We brought inu out for a group socializing event over the weekend. This was the first time in inu's 5-month life to meet with so many dogs (gigantic, tiny, aggressive, timid, fury, furless, obese, thin, old, young, clean, smelly dogs) and human beings. Inu was a bit timid at the beginning in the crowd but she started to get along well with other dogs and people quickly. The dogs would smell each other when they met, probably that was the way they said hello to each other. Inu would become playful to some dogs, even the dogs are much bigger in size than her, and on the other hand, she would become timid to other dogs that are about the same size. I am sure inu has her own judgment while socializing with the peers. There were other beagles around also and we brought inu to meet with them too. What they did was to sniff each other.

Inu still appeared to approach people more than dogs and she got along with people very well. She looked so cute and behaved so well while people were petting her. Many people had praised her and I was thinking in my head like, ya right, only if you were that nice at home.

Inu spent 4 hours in the event and she looked so tired eventually. We had to hold her in our hands at some point. Anyhow, she got some free dog treats at the scene and I think inu like them very much. I am sure inu had a lot of fun. Inu pretty much had her mind shut down the rest of the evening, resting with eyes closed. I am glad that inu had a great time learning the other side of the world, beside our house.

We took a measure for inu and realized that inu had been growing, although not by much and not as fast. From front toes to back toes, we measured about 101 cm in length. She also grew heavier to about 9.5 kg now, that's over 20 lbs. :O.

Today I found an interesting article, also the most popular news at yahoo about a beagle saving her owner's life to be awarded with humanitarian prize. If inu has appropriate training, I am sure she can do it well too :).

LIght out

I realized that I had not been updating inu's life for quite some time. The past 2 weeks had been very busy with some visitors. Inu had also been very exciting with all the visitors. But poor inu, when we had visitors, inu had to spend more time in her cage. Hawing did not help, begging did not help. Only if you can stop jumping and biting on people.

We had been turning on the light for inu at night for the past 3 months. We decided to turn the light off at night and see if inu liked it, or if inu could sleep better. Inu had gone through a few nights without light and I think she managed to do well. Toilet was cleaner, except one night. So, that might prove inu could still see things at night when there was no light. Inu was still sleeping when I came down to see her in the morning, and there was no strange behavior from inu. I think light out may be okay with inu then.