All he wanted to do at the new class was play with Lola, the mastiff puppy, and inspect the other two dogs in the class. I guess there’s supposed to be one or two more people, but we’ll see if they show next week.

I also took him for a walk today before I came into work, and he managed to go by barking/aggressive/friendly dogs in the dog gauntlet without having a freakout.  He did some bouncing and some barking, but none of his growling, yanking, spinning, freaking out that he’s done previously.

So, I guess he’s learning.  We can keep him.

Even though I loved Train and had to give him up, I’m actually liking my new (as yet unnamed phone).  It’s the HTC Hero through Sprint. I also had to give up my nice Free & Clear plan of 750 minutes for $40 a month, but with the unlimited text ($15) and data  ($25) packages added on, it wasn’t all that cheap.  I’ll have to see how the Everything plan treats me, as it’s only $450 anytime minutes, but free mobile to mobile — so it might balance out. And my nights start at 7pm instead of 8.

G.I. Joe = OK, decent action/explosion/chase scenes — the plot is just to get you to the fight scene movie.

Sherlock Holmes = Good!

Avatar 3D = Totally awesome.

This trip was pretty chill. Bill’s back was bothering him, so we didn’t do any road trips or shopping expeditions. We mostly hung around the house.  This is the first trip we haven’t gone house hunting, flower shopping, or to Lowes.  Did make it to Big Lots a couple of times, so Hell hasn’t totally frozen over yet.

Ash took his neutering pretty hard (haha).  He just was miserable whenever the pain pills would start to wear off.  Though the longer term frustration of keeping his bandage on for the dew claw removal is proving the worst.  He’s broken 4 e-collars so far, and the two weeks isn’t up til tomorrow.  He ripped the top stitch out too, so it’s all pretty much healed except for the gap at the top.  He just bashes his e-collar into everything until it’s just hanging around him in pieces.  Then, once he has that, he sets in to trying to get the bandage off.  I’ve been having to work from home, since he leaves it alone if we’re around.

Sometimes I’m glad we have him, but I’m still having a hard time feeling a true bond most of the time.

1.  The dog door + yard is like magic to him.  He’ll go out and come back in just to see if he still can, and is happy every time it works.

2.  Toys.  He didn’t show much interest in the toys at first, but he’s slowly learning that they are fun.  When he makes one squeak or play sounds, he lights up with delight. “Look!  Look what I did!” then he thinks maybe he should run away.  It seems like the toys he had in his old homes were ones he made for himself. So two stuffed bunnies (missing a limb or two) and a headless hard-plastic dinosaur are what he came with, clearly toys for the kid that he appropriated and they let him have.

3.  Dog beds.  He really didn’t get what they were.  I think he thought of them like furniture and stayed off of them.  Jim had to get up early for a meeting today, so Chopper and I slept in the guest room.  I put a bed in there for him and he was like, “Why?  I want to lay next to you on the floor but this thing is there!!”  So he slept at the foot of the bed but eventually tried the dog bed and when I woke up this morning he was curled up there.

4. Car rides.  They said they took him to the dog park and he did fine there, but then they also said he only gets to go in the car to go to the vet.  I guess they did say the dog park was only a mile away, so maybe they walked him there.   It’s a fight to get him in the Jeep, but we’ve managed to get him to jump in on his own once.  I figure a few more rides to Petsmart and other fun places and he’ll be ready to go whenever we say the word.

5. Playing.  He loves to play with Kylie, and really took to Rocky right off the bat.  Sierra has her bum leg still, so she hasn’t really gotten in much on the playing since we got him.  However, he’s out of shape compared to Kylie.  He’s constantly panting from the effort of trying to keep up to her.  And she’s totally ripped and muscular, so in comparison, he looks like a flabby couch potato.  It’s pretty funny.  We’re curious to see if he gains weight on the 74 lbs he’s got now, or loses it when she’s done with him.

6.  The crate doesn’t have to be cramped.  The crate they were keeping him in is too small!  It’s about a medium sized wire crate.  When he stands in it, he’s pressing the back of it up so it’s bowed, and to turn around he has to bang himself up on the sides and practically fold himself in half.  Then when he lays down in it, he’s basically tail and nose to the bars.  Needless to say, we’re not using it!  We put his blankie in Kylie’s crate, and he was all.. “Don’t make me go in there!!” but once he got in he was like, “This ain’t half bad” and laid down and stretched out.

7. Kylie gets to eat the good stuff.  I’m sure some of it is just that it’s in someone else’s bowl, so therefore is clearly tastier than whatever is in the bowl you’re supposed to be eating from.  They couldn’t tell me what food he was on, so I’m transitioning him over to Kylie’s.  He’d like to swap over 100% now, and we keep having conversations about how you don’t eat out of Kylie’s bowl. Both Kylie and I are telling him, and he knows, but he still will ninja a mouthful if he thinks he can get away with it.  On the bright side, he’s not a glutton, so I hope to be able to keep free feeding them when the transition between food is complete.

8.  Since Kylie has her loveseat, Chopper thinks he should get the futon.  He hasn’t tried to get up on any of the other furniture or the beds, but he’s pretty sure that he should get the futon.  He was trained to stay off the furniture, but Kylie’s busy retraining him.

So the frustrating things have been:

1.  The night we brought him home he cried for about half an hour.  I’m not sure if he was missing his family, or since the guy worked nights, he just wasn’t used to going to bed at midnight.

2.  It took him a couple of days to figure out about not marking and peeing in the house, and to use the dog door to go outside to pee.  Only 3 accidents though, so it could have been worse.  He seems to have it all figured out now.

3. I took he and Kylie for a walk yesterday, just me, and I had him on his gentle leader.  He did fine, but when there’s a dog barking at him through a fence he goes batshit crazy for some reason.  He slipped out of the gentle leader and ran around like a freak along the fence, barking and growling and jumping on the fence.  This was behind Jason and Wendy’s where they have the yappy little black herd dog.  I don’t think he wanted to hurt him, but he sounds like a murder machine and the poor people who live there were freaking out trying to get their dog inside before he jumped the fence.  He didn’t come when I called him, kept running by me, and didn’t want treats.  He was also mouthing me and Kylie when we got close enough to grab him, but he’s got a very gentle mouth, not a scratch.  I got the lead on his normal collar and hauled him off.  I’m glad he didn’t run off entirely, since he has no tags and no microchip.  Now I run the lead from the gentle leader through the ring on his normal collar, so even if he gets it off again I’ll still have a line on him.

4.  We haven’t been able to decide on a new name yet.  He might end up getting stuck with Chopper. We’ve been kicking around ideas for: Vin, Dom, Baxter, and Xander.

Funny observations:

1.  Aside from panting all the time, he tends to just let the tip of his tongue hang out.  He sleeps this way too and his tongue gets dry so he’s all thirsty and smacking his mouth when he wakes up from naps or sleeping.

2.  He can’t wiggle just his tail. His whole butt has to go along for the ride.

3.  He’s got a crooked tooth on the bottom.

4.  I don’t think his dew claws were removed properly, as there’s a bit of bone sticking out where one of them was!

5.  He’s known as “Kimbo” to the Planned Pethood vet, so has had his name changed at least once already.

6.  He’s afraid of the camera!
How Kylie feels about it:

Their greeting was lukewarm at best, she couldn’t really be bothered to care about him when there was snow and things to sniff going on.   And I felt kinda the same way, but Jim was the instigator and wanted to give him a try.  And honestly, had I seen the crate, I would have taken him in regardless.  He crowded her in the Jeep, since I wasn’t letting him go hide in the corner behind the crate.  We took them straight to Petsmart to buy him a new collar, because I don’t like those ones that snap on.  They said he’d broken two of them already, so I didn’t feel like I could control him with the collar he had and he needed a gentle leader too.   Once we got him into the house though, they went into the back yard and started to play. So she was much more interested in him then, and they’ve been getting along pretty well.  I’d say she’s 90% happy with the new addition, aside from a few things she’s not ready to share yet.  He doesn’t get to play rope with either of us, that’s our special game and if he tries to intervene she’ll rip his face off.  She wants him to learn to sleep in in the mornings, as do we all!  And he’s not allowed on the bed, he can stay on the floor like the chump he is. 

So far the best thing is that if I’m in the beanbag, Kylie feels compelled to come snuggle now.  Nothing like Jealousy to bring out the Puppy Love!

He already gets along with the rest of the pack!  I can’t wait to mess with my parents when they show up on Friday.  We’re betting that we won’t be able to fool them.

The couple who gave him up obviously were a little overwhelmed by the energy requirements of a Boxer.  They’d had him for 6 months, and he was a gift from the guy’s uncle.  The guy (Joshua) was working 60 hours a week, and it seemed like Allison (his wife) was a stay at home mom with their 16mo old.  Either way, it’s the usual sad story for young boxers.  I’m glad we were able to take him in.  I think it’ll work out, but he needs a lot of obedience training. Still, he has a good personality/disposition and lets Kylie boss him around.

It gave me a horrible, horrible headache.  So I didn’t do any of the rides.  Jim, Josh, and Amy went on a roller coaster. And then Jim and Josh climbed around on a giant jungle gym type thing that they had to wear harnesses on.

While waiting for them, I talked to Channing a bit about how Mater and Kylie were doing, and they were behaving.

After that, we went back to the house and had some yummy chili that Frankie had made, and just hung out and talked. Then we watched My Name is Bruce.  Interesting movie, that!  Crashed out.

The Mad Scientist blocks I bought for Julia and Marie were a big hit with all the adults.
Saturday we went to the Severs Corn Maze, and it was a lovely day for it.  We didn’t do the whole maze for the first time.  Josh is less ambitious when he has to carry a baby through the whole thing.   Not that I blame him!  Marie loved the corn pit, and didn’t want to get out, and Julia wanted nothing to do with it.

They had the petting zoo again, it was a little better this year.  The best part was they had some red kangaroos who had babies in their pouches. So cute when the baby poked his head out to look around.

We went back to the house and had some brats and dinner.  There was much talking and looking at of pictures of Zombiefests of the past, making us all feel old!

Then we went to the Frightmares at Buck Hill.  The first year for this new Halloween attraction.  4 attractions actually at a local ski place.  It was all pretty awesome!  We got to ride up a people mover and walking through a graveyard, and they had giant animatronics and people walking around with monster costumes, like something out of an evil Dark Crystal.  They even got some screaming out of me. We lost Nick inside one of the haunted houses, and Jim and I went through together and Nick had to go through by himself! He actually got out before us, and everyone was starting to worry about what happened to us.  The end of it had these walls that pressed in and you had to fight your way out.  It was awesome!

Then we went back and had some more chatting, then when everyone else burned out, the rest of us watched Drag Me To Hell!  Everyone was hoping Mac guy would die, but…  no.   Nick really hated the movie, but I didn’t think it was so bad.  Just a humorous horror flick!