Thanksgiving Butterball

On Sunday, I had 4 sticks of butter laying on the counter warming up to room temperature so I could make shortbread. Unbe- knownst to us, Zephyr jumped up on the counter and ate all four, wrappers and all. He came downstairs and sat in front of us looking miserable for awhile. I couldn't think of anything that could make him so unhappy, but then again, I didn't know that he had helped himself to the butter. He eventually brought it all up, wrappers and all, at our feet. So, it being this close to Thanks- giving and it being such a turkey stunt, my co-workers have nicknamed him "Butterball".

You didn't really want pictures of the mess, so the pictures are just of him at work this past week. He is currently 8 months old.

He didn't quite learn his lesson. The next night, I had brought a piece of cake home from a meeting, and laid it on the counter. I saw him sniffing the air and set a mousetrap in front of the cake. Later that evening, I heard the mousetrap snap. Zephyr was about 5 feet away and rather uncertain of what had happened. He hasn't taken anything else off the counter for 2 days, so we will see if he's done counter- surfing or not.

Long Weekend

Veteran's Day observance gave us a long weekend. We took a long walk around downtown on Friday evening. On Saturday, we met up with our puppy counselor and other puppy raisers for some training on new techniques for working with the dogs. So far today, I have had Zephyr working on a flat collar rather than the gentle leader. He is doing very well. I kept the gentle leader on him at least for today in case I felt the need to switch to it.

Our puppy counselor is also the breeder family for Zephyr's mother, Swayzer. Swayzer has a new litter of half siblings about 4-5 weeks old, and equally mixed between black and yellow like Zephyr's litter. They will be going to puppy homes shortly after Thanksgiving.

Seven to Eight Months

At his last vet visit, Zephyr was 55 lbs. He's growing all the time, but he's very compact and dense.