Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Aston: Then...And Now

This was taken on our first day with Aston:

This was taken tonight:

He's become a lot bigger and an awful lot fluffier!

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Freedom!

Aston was neutered last Wednesday (the poor thing) and had to have one of those Elizabethan collars - which we call a lampshade - to stop him from licking his stitches and getting an infection. He was not a big fan of it. He kept bumping into things and trying to get through spaces that were too small for him. Mum has bruises on her legs from when he would run up against her. He was getting frustrated with not being able to hold his chews and toys with his paws to chew on them, so we had to hold them for him. One day he was playing with his ball, which is a sort of mesh of rubber so that he can carry it around, and we have taught him to drop it for a treat. Well he did try to, but the ball got stuck in his lampshade and he had to swing his head around to try and get it out. It ended up looking like he was doing a very big flourish to get the treat!
Yesterday was his first full day without it. Previously we had just been taking it off him for walks and when we were sitting next to him to make sure that he wasn't licking. So he enjoyed himself being able to do all the things that he normally could. And we enjoyed him not running into us or the walls with the lampshade!

Here are some pictures of him with his collar on:

Hiding places

Lately Aston has been hiding his chews all over the living room - behind pictures on the fireplace, the TV stand, couch cushions, and on windowsills...
The thing is, he's not actually particularly territorial over his chews. I can easily take one of him when he has it and he doesn't growl or get angry. I can also pat him when he's eating and he's completely fine. Sometimes I even hold the chew for him and he puts his paw on my hand to put against it so that he can get more leverage to tear pieces of the rawhide off.
I think that he just likes to have a stash of chews around the room for whenever he wants to have one. He reminds me of a squirrel at times.
I wonder what he's going to be like in the summer time out in the garden? He hasn't started digging yet, but he's never had a chew outside. Hopefully we'll be able to avoid the garden being dotted with holes!

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Introduction

Aston is our 6-month old red and white English Cocker Spaniel. He is occasionally (okay, quite often) a maniac, but he's also smart, friendly, and funny. We got him in January when he was 3 months old. He was so tiny (only about 7 pounds) and now he has more than tripled in size!

He has already graduated his first puppy class, and he will finish his second set of classes this week. I love doing the classes with him, I'm always very impressed with how fast he learns and he loves getting a ridiculous amount of treats on Saturday mornings. They have puppy play time at the classes, but he is usually more interested in sniffing the floor to find wayward treats than to play with the other puppies. I think he prefers people to dogs, because he realizes that people are the ones with treats!

I will update this blog with stories about Aston and all the mischief that he gets up to.

Here's the beautiful boy:



P.S. I need to attribute the title of this blog to my mum, because only she could come up with something so corny.