Sadly this year we can’t really have much in the way of Christmas decoration because Monty would eat them, but it is almost Christmas and I’ll be really glad to get some time off work.

I was playing with Monty a few nights ago and he bit my finger. Well, he jumped to get a toy I was holding and caught the bit of skin right next to the nail with his tooth. It wasn’t an intentional bite but it hurt and started bleeding so I went upstairs to put a plaster on it. I was standing in front of the sink putting the plaster on when I started to feel light headed, and the next thing I knew I was waking up on the floor. I can’t believe a tiny little cut made me faint. It wasn’t even still bleeding by the time I’d rinsed it and got the plaster out! Anyway I’m taking a more zero tolerance approach to his jumping now. If I have a toy, he has to sit before he can have it. I started letting him play more roughly with a lot of tug and throwing/chasing his toys in the living room because it seemed like he needed it to burn off his energy but it only works if he doesn’t bite me!

He has discovered how to jump to get onto the furniture. It used to be that he’d go up to a chair and put his front paws on it while trying to push with his back legs and kind of pull himself onto it, which didn’t work at all. He’s now discovered that he can actually just jump straight up in one go, and now there’s no stopping him. We didn’t really want him on the furniture, but when you leave him alone for a minute and come back into the room to find him sitting in your chair looking like he owns the place, what can you do?

(We have to cut the ears off all of his toys eventually to stop him from swallowing them. Mrs Elephant looks a bit sad now but he still seems to like her. When he’s tired he just lays there holding her in his mouth)

Here’s a picture from the puppy meet. Monty is the fluffy boy in the top right with the red harness. His mum is in the bottom left with the red collar. Notice how they are the same size as their mum already! The other three black dogs are his littermates. The white dog is a westiepoo (westie x poodle) who belongs to one of the other owners, and the other dog is a Rottweiler puppy who belongs to the breeder.

He looks like a fully grown little dog now. Or a little bear, the way he pads around the house. His behaviour is still very inconsistent though. He is teething at the moment so that may account for some of the craziness. We had a day last week where he’d seemed a bit unsettled all day, and then in the evening one of his baby teeth fell out while he was chewing on a toy. He’s usually very good at settling down and sleeping through the night, but that night I had to sleep downstairs with him because he started crying every time we would leave him. He’s a funny little guy. I guess that his gums were hurting and he wanted the comfort of knowing his caregiver was near. I kind of liked waking up in the night and being able to see him.