Ole day8

I woke up at 6:00 this morning to puppy kisses! Ole had popped the door of his X-pen open and fortunately came straight over to me and woke me up. Shelly had the doorway blocked so he couldn't sprint around the house and pee, poo ,or chew. She had an eye on him. Shelly likes working out of the home. I scooted him downstairs and out to the wood pile and he took care of business big time...GOOD BOY, Ole. Both his ears are up today, no more comb over! He does look like a cone head but no more floppy left ear, at least for today. Abner has been out of town for 2 days so I decided to try a 3 dog walk before breakfast. It went pretty well, Shelly and Elmo on my left and Ole on the right. He was pretty good, I kept him on a short but loose leash and he was good at either walking slightly behind me or if he did pull, a quick little multi tug on the leash and he was happily back in place. he seems to be a pretty good puppy, not a lot of drama or over excitement to him, very compliant to what i want him to do and at the same time confident and easy going. I've only had him 8 days , but so far so good. Adolescence looms ahead however so we'll see. Lots of people stop at the front gate of my yard , everyone wants to meet the new puppy. There seem to be quite a few scandinavians staying in vacation rentals this year as several families have stopped to meet Ole and the rest of my pack. Tourists that had to leave their dogs behind come by for a dog fix. They usually either like Emo or Shelly but everyone wants to meet Ole. Because Ole is a sable colored GSD some people think he is a mix. That's fine with me. One couple from Minnesota, asked Abner who Ole's breeder was as they have a GSD that they bought for big bucks from a professional breeder. When Abner told them Ole was from his sisters farm they were not impressed.
Today I took Ole all by himself to my painting studio where I also keep all of my agility training equipment for puppy classes. I introduced him to tunnels, the slide, the mini teeter, the table, and the dog walk. He loved it all especially the teeter board. I also popped a bunch of bubble wrap and he was unfazed by the popping noise. I was so happy about that as Shelly is terribly sound sensitive. Now i have 2 dogs ( Elmo and Ole ) that seem okay with fire cracker like noises. Yea!!!!! I couldn't get much in the way of painting done as Ole was feeling his oats so we drove over to the PB Vons shopping center and hung out in front of Vons and then Starbucks trolling for puppy petters. Ole practiced sitting for everyone he met. The best was a 3 year old girl and her mother. the little girl did all the stuff that sets dogs off , squealing jumping, twirling, other and fast movements. I told Ole to sit and he watched her calmly and took a treat from her then he gave her a kiss ! It was sweet. I called Abner and he had taken Elmo and Shelly on a long walk to our property in North PB. On the way back Shelly had insisted on stopping at MacDonalds for a hamburger. Abner's knee was sore ( he had surgery on it 6 weeks ago) and he asked me to come by and pick them up. When we got there, Abner was sitting on the patio and had broken the meat part of the hamburger into smallish pieces. Ole now likes MacDonalds as much as Shelly and Elmo do. While we were sitting there, a homeless guy with a gravelly whiskey voice kept up an ongoing chatter giving us all kinds of advice and philosophy on dogs like : dog is god spelled backwards and dogs should eat meat and German Shepherds are intelligent and extremely loyal & on and on and on. We thanked him for his advice and skirted the backside of the building to escape. But as Abner said, the poor guy is really lonely.
Ole has really developed a nice almost auto sit whenever people come up to him. He needs work on having a softer mouth and the off command. Tomorrow!