Monday, December 31, 2007

Elvis Has Left the Building

This past week has been a big week or so for us and Jozy. A couple of our friends had to leave town for Christmas week and left their Shih Tzu (Elvis) with us to dog sit. As you know, Jozy is not good around other dogs, especially dogs in her territory. Thus, we spent the whole week with the house divided in two, one dog allowed in one half and the other allowed in the other half. Noises on one side of the house invariably caused the McCoy side of the house to erupt into a frenzy.

Throw in Christmas, work, graduation, visiting relatives and soccer coaching and it has been a whirlwind of activity for Jozy to get used to. However, by today, I have to say that she was starting to beat my expectations and actually had moments of quiet around Elvis...and was sometimes able to sit in his presence. And then Elvis left this morning, his parents home from their Christmas vacation.

Jozy, depressed and saddened at the loss of her new friend, was immediately consoled by her first day of puppy obedience school.

Class was a trip. There were about 10 other dogs, almost every one was some sort of small toy dog that had been purchased from Texas or Mississippi and was about 1/3rd the size of Jozy. Jozy took to her role of bad girl of the class with ease, barking and freaking out until the instructor dropped two pig ears in her lap to chew on. Throw in some summer sausage and Jozy was as happy as a clam. Most of the class was spent talking and eating pig ears. No real instruction yet. However, by the end of the class Jozy was having some one on one time with another classmate, sharing summer sausage in the training ring with only occassional outbursts of aggressive play. It will be interesting to see how she does next week.

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