Memorial Day with a very grown up puppy

 First of all, Happy Memorial Day!! I am proud and thankful for our military, past and present, two legged and four legged. I would like to specifically thank my brother for his service in Iraq and here in the States. :)

Secondly, I realize that this post is long overdue. I will try to not neglect this blog for so long in the future, but don't ask for any promises ;) Novel and I have been quite busy for the past few weeks. I started working at as a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital, and Novel has started accompanying me some days. He does exceptionally well in his kennel at the vet, and totally chills out while I'm working, even when the other dogs are barking or whining. Of course, everyone there is very impressed with him.

During training, I started to raise the difficulty of distractions for Novel. Of course, he is doing well as usual, but there are some things he really needs to work on. For example, he gets WAY too excited when he meets new people or dogs. He bolts to the end of his leash if he thinks we are going over to see a person or dog, and is very bad at holding a sit for petting. I am happy that he is friendly, but he needs to learn to control himself! He used not to be so bad with this, so I am starting to drastically cut back on the amount of people who I let pet him. He needs to learn that not every person we see is going to play with him.

On another note, he did fantastic when we went kayaking last week! Yes, I take my dogs kayaking with me. It has helped Abbi to have fantastic balance and confidence on unstable surfaces, and I am hoping it will do the same for Novel. He loved it. Most of the time, he was curled up in my lap with one elbow hanging over the edge of the kayak, soaking up the sun. I got a bunch of killer pictures, but unfortunately I haven't been able to get them onto my computer...something wrong with the SD card adapter maybe?

Here are some pictures from today instead. I honestly can not believe how big he is getting...he doesn't look like a puppy any more! How can a four month old pup look so grown up?

 Ok, now I just had to make a few comments about the picture below. From the very first day, Novel has gotten along with the neighbor's horses like this. Today they nuzzled each other for probably close to five minutes before the horse finally walked away. Of course, he walked away right as I was starting a video :P However, I was very glad of the chance that I did get to finally get some good pictures of this adorable relationship. What amazes me is that Novel doesn't ever bite at the horses. He just kinda rubs his face on the side of their faces. And Riley (the horse in the picture below) literally pets Novel on the top of his head with his lips. Now is this picture not the cutest ever??

P.S. I just discovered that my sister made a blog post about our kayaking trip, pictures included! Check it out HERE