JAX

So, this is our new puppy, Jaxon. (That's JAXON, not Jackson. He wasn't named after any freaks, reverends, or Civil War generals.) He's a purebred Boston Terrier and he's 16 weeks old. We adopted him into the fam three weeks ago today. He's cute, sweet, cuddly, bouncy, and all that. He also snores. And farts. And eats rocks.

I'm training hi. This has been hard. My other "trained" dogs were a Norweigan Elkhound, Dien, who died several years ago and was my favorite dog of all time. My current big guy is Sully. Sully is part Chocolate Lab and part Dobe. He's very large. And very smart. Jax is, well, he's a Boston. And a pup. Boston's (I've had one before, Flash) are smart---in their own way. They're also incredibly stubborn. They also have the attention spans of gnats. I'm going by my own experiences with the breed, here. Plenty of people have given me the smirky smile when I've told them I'm training Jax. As if this can't be done! They're like "Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say." Well, I'm doing it, by the gods, and Jax is going to be the best little dog in the tri-state area.

First things first, though. I'm crate training him. That's going pretty well now, but for the first week or so...let's just say I cleaned enough poop out of that crate to fertilize a good-sized garden. And I shampooed that dog so many times that he smells permanently like a green apple. But we're settling into a routine now, so the accidents have stopped.

Also, Jax has learned to sit. We're working on "stay" and "shake paws." And he's actually making good progress. He understands "no mouth" when we don't want him to gnawl on something, like our hands, and he knows the ever important "down." The next stage is taking him to the park and getting him to follow my commands while there. He's always excited and distracted when we're at the park, so it'll take a few trips to get him used to taking commands there. That'll be the real test.

I think He'll eventually succeed at everything I put to him. He seems to be smart and eager to please and those are the two most important attributes a dog in training can have. When he masters the sit/stay commands, and he's shaking paws on command sans treat, we're going to start agility: tunnels and see-saws, the whole nine yards. I can't wait!