Cap in Action

You've all been asking for it. Sorry for the delay. I've got some stuff going on at work and home. But read on and scroll down--videos of Cap!

Cap and Mimi are becoming best buddies. Sure, Cap will play with Gracie if that is his only option but he obviously prefers Mimi. In fact, it takes both sisters working in shifts and a good couple of hours to wear him out every night--and that's after I do some clicker work and play tug and chase games with him myself.

He's working on sit and down (the latter is coming along nicely). He's struggling with a paw touch to anything. He's like Mimi with the damned blue bowl--he'll do anything he can to avoid touching the target with his paw. Very strange. But I think we made a tiny bit of progress on this tonight. He'll nose touch the target just fine though. We continue to work on recalls and waiting at the door and in his crate when I open that. Barking in his crate when I'm out of sight is a problem. A frustrating problem. The pitch of his yip could shatter glass. His bite inhibition has really improved. All I have to do is say "ow!" in a normal voice and he'll drop the toy and jump back and look at me. He's also learned the various meanings of "off".

But he's falling quickly into our routine. And believe me, with five fox terriers, I adhere to a pretty strict one. He sleeps soundly in his crate through the night, he potties when I let him outside (sometimes I have to send him and Mimi out separately because they won't stop playing long enough to pee or drink water), he runs into his crate just like the other dogs when I'm ready to leave for work because he's learned that a yummy, dry dog biscuit is heading his way.

Now that I've got some lovely videos of him posted, we can return to this question of what kind of dog Cap might be. Before you get all hasty, let me give you two pieces of info.

• Week 14/15: 10.5 lbs, 12.75" at the shoulder (iffy measurement)
• Week 15/16: 10.0 lbs, 12.5" at the shoulder (two good measurements)

(Yes, he lost weight but that's because he spends most of his waking hours wrestling and chasing the sisters. I'm going to up his food volume a bit to compensate.)

Now, two points only make a line, we need three to make a curve. So I plan to collect his stats regularly until week 24, approximately 6 months of age.

All my friends with border collies say with absolute certainty that he is part BC. But my friends who have other kinds of dogs believe he is mostly if not all aussie. Ah, we all see what we want to see, don't we? Right now, Cap is smaller than two of my cats. He easily walks under Gracie (granted she's a big fox terrier bitch but still...).

I'm not saying what I think he is for now, but if he's going to be 40 lbs he'd better get cracking.

I plan to do a genetic test on him for grins and giggles. So you're convinced he's a BC? If you'd care to put a little, um, wager, on that, well, let me know. Strictly penny-ante stuff, of course. But I have a PayPal account you can send the money to!