Happy New Year - Balou turns four months

Big bear, little bear.

After our lovely Christmas break in the countryside we are now back to our usual life in London. The dogs thoroughly enjoyed all the space they had with the paddocks and big gardens in Rutland but they enjoy London life and their own home just as much.

Each day we visit one of our big local open spaces usually Highgate Woods and Hampstead Heath. This is the highlight of the dogs' day and we normally spend a couple of hours outside, even if our walks haven't been as full of walking since getting the baby!

Balou munching on grass while Scrap keeps watch

Pom and Balou posing

The dogs love sniffing the grass, chasing squirrels, frolicking in the leaves and if they manage to sneak it past me, rolling in the fox poo. They also love the assortment of other dogs they meet, each day they meet dozens of new and existing friends so this is great for Balou's socialisation. The last week there have been lots of kids off school and most of them are desperate to say hello to the heffalump. Balou seems to love children, the only difficulty is trying to make sure he doesn't jump up or hang off their sleeves. These are completely normal things for puppies to want to do but when the puppy is going to be a giant it's important that Balou realises he can't do these things. So we are still working on the leave + reward + distract when he starts trying to pull clothes, and 'off' if his front paws leave the floor, redirecting him to a sit.

Balou has now firmly outgrown his first two crates and we are waiting for the delivery of a 48inch crate which will be his new sleeping quarters for the next while. Unfortunately as we've had the holidays things are taking a while to arrive. Since I don't want Balou to be uncomfortable and as he is doing so well with housetraining he has spent the last few nights sleeping out of the crate. He seems to move from place to place, sitting room, corridor, bedroom, sprawling out everywhere and then in the morning he is often squeezed back in his crate with the door wide open. While I'm not against Balou sleeping loose when he's older I think it's important that he still has a crate as he does occasionally need some down time and he knows he has to relax when he's in his crate. Needless to say the crates aren't unoccupied. Here's Lucha the kitten snuggling in one of them...