Smart Puppy

This guy has upturned our household. In mostly wonderful ways.

The challenges:

• All dog food is for Gibbs? he doesn't know the difference. The upside of this one is that he's not aggressive. Luckily neither are the others.
• Sheldon is surprisingly tolerant of Gibbs' obsessive attentions (to the point that he seems a bit withdrawn for Sheldon). We're doing some one-on-one with Sheldon, and some brothers time with the two of them to get to a place they can both be happy in.
• There's a lot of growling by Mickey (very not tolerant). He's not sure about yet another puppy in his face... but he's mellowing day by day. He even let his need to nurture and protect overpower his need to dislike this pup. When we were walking earlier in the week, Gibbs was spooked by a horse one one side of the road and a cow on the other, and Mickey came running back to us and circled around (his Heeler half herding us) and protectively encouraged this extra large puppy to come along. It was a sweet moment we have to hang onto in the chaos of transition.

Anyone can tell, that these are small challenges we are taking in stride.

The wonderful?

• He's a love!
• He's silly!
• He's sweet!
• He's smart!

So smart, he makes games of everything. And anything can be a toy (like this dog-water bottle). Just the other day, while walking him and Sheldon (one of our brother bonding time walks), Gibbs spied and picked up a pine cone that was about the size of a tennis ball. He carried it with him and we played together tossing and retrieving it until it broke down. He really knows how to entertain himself and us.