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This morning, Burton made the tentative and unsure, yet inevitable steps towards becoming a mature dog. The past few days, Burton hasn’t been peeing as much as normal and so I’d been a little concerned.

When it comes to dogs, these most stoic and majestic of beasts rarely complain. Haha that’s a good one. Brush a certain unnamed muppet’s beard and be prepared for the howls and screams that accompany a dramatic, over-acted display of pain and torture. Anyway – a large part of doggy healthcare revolves around intake and output. When anything is out of the ordinary “flow” of things, that’s the time to be worried.

In hindsight, it begins to make sense that Burton has also shown more interest in lampposts, fire hydrants and other typical doggy landmarks on our walks. This morning as he sniffed a lamppost, he finally decided this was his time. With a heroic effort, he lifted his left leg, raised it high as if throwing off his cloak of puppyhood and declared to the world that Burton the PON had arrived and was about to make his mark.

Burton started to pee and pee he did, desperately trying to pee the highest to assert his dominance. However, this is where his plans began to unhinge. Not used to this level of multitasking, he got a little ambitious in his declaration and lifted a bit too high. He teetered for a second and then unceremoniously flopped over. He didn’t know what to do and so quickly went into his normal pee squat, still peeing. At this point he realized that he was just peeing on the ground like a chump, so in a panicked last attempt to paint the lamp post, he started to spin around and ended up spraying pee all over the sidewalk (thankfully not on himself).

He never did end up getting any pee on the lamppost.. but left no doubt as to who owns the surrounding pavement.

Pee on Mr. Burton, Pee on.

A couple of photos.. my weekly quota of DSLR use! Just looking at the photos, especially the first one, he still looks like such a puppy. Comparing with the photos from when he first got here.. it’s crazy how much he’s grown. Then I compared it with the photos of full grown dogs at the breeders and it looks like he’s about half grown. Hopefully he retains his cuteness even when he’s grown up.

His sleep mode is just like a Mac. Instant-wake.

So we’ve had Burton longer than the breeder now! He’s bonded quite well to us, and his training continues to progress. We’ve been mainly focused on his house training on grass as well as his leash manners. We’re going to start introducing a bell as well as hope we can begin his stays. He starts his next set of classes (Manners 1) on Thursday and we’re supposed to be able to do stays.. so it’s going to be a challenge for sure.

He’s begun to grow into adolescence (we think) as he’s started to be a little more stubborn on his leash. Using a combination of toys/treats/redirection, his morning walks are quite pleasant. He definitely needs to be able to run free daily, otherwise he just has too much energy.

We’ve learned that he actually plays different with Sam and I. He knows Sam doesn’t like him jumping on her, so he always brings the toy to her and then lies down or drops it. With me, he continually butts me with the toy and tries to put it in my hand because we play tug a lot. If I’m on the ground he’ll jump into my lap etc. His bite inhibition is quite good, but he dislikes my hand in his mouth so mouthing is hard to work on. He just keeps avoiding my hand (which is good that he knows teeth don’t belong on skin) but we have to make sure he knows how to bite super lightly in the event that he accidentally bites someone (maybe being stepped on or something).

He’s roughly 25lbs and seems to have slowed a little with his growing, but it’s probably just harder to notice. My wild guess is he’ll probably top out around 35lbs in the next 2 months and then slowly fill out another 10lbs or so over a year or two.

Warning: this video will be extremely boring to non dog-lovers :p It’s not much more than typical Burton behaviour. View it in YouTube to be able to read the annotations.

It feels like Burton’s been here forever,but really we’re only coming up on our 6th week with the little guy. He’s still just 14 weeks old and as far as he’s come.. physically and behaviourally, there’s still so far to go.

He’s 13 inches tall at the withers (shoulders) , and when fully grown he should be between 18 and 20 inches. He’ll actually only grow another third of his height again, so he won’t actually end up that big. He is getting rather hefty now and with some rough weighing on the bathroom scale, clocks in at around 20 lbs.