Exciting older news...

Well there is a bunch of stuff we need to update everyone on... so I guess I will start with some pre-vacation (last week) news. First off, Elizabeth had been very concerned about Maki's safety while in the car. To solve this she proceeded to do incredible amounts of research in dog car safety technology and found a couple of alternatives. The safest thing is to have a crate in the car where he can lay, but we don't like this mainly because it involves a massive crate in one of our cars and it would be difficult to change it from car to car. The next alternative is a body harness. These devices allow the pooch some mobility within the car while being strapped to a body harness which is attached to the seat belt or the child seat hook. We decided on a harness, but then the question became... which one? There are many out there with many prices. After much research on Elizabeth's part she found the only true crash tested dog harness! This thing is heavy duty with seat belt grade straps, heavy duty D rings and hooks. The actual thing is so heavy that at the beginning Maki would loose his balance when walking with it! He has the bright red harness which is great since it would make him easy to identify... not that he would get very far with it on, but it is a nice bonus! He does not mind it one bit since I think he knows it means a ride in the car! Here are some pictures of Maki and the harness:

Other things that have been going on before we left for Michigan... Maki has had some visits to the doctor, but I will let Elizabeth give you the details on this later. Maki has also learned some new tricks! The little guy is very smart and loves to learn new things... and if he doesn't get it he just gives himself a time out in his crate, it is really cute! First new trick he learned was "shake" ... this has now become his favorite thing to do, he can shake with either paw and he will default to this trick (or "sit") if he doesn't know what you want! The next trick he learned was "crawl". This one is a crowd pleaser! At least we both love it, he looks ridiculous. However it is a little hard to get him to do this without a treat, but we are working on it. He has also perfected his training coming in and out of the house. He now will wait for you to say "break" or "come" before he steps into or out of the house. We have extended this training to his walks, he now waits before stepping onto a road from a sidewalk. This one definitely needs some more work since he now stops if we get withing ten feet of the edge of a sidewalk... it can get annoying. Recently he has also learned the command "leave it". He knows that he is not supposed to touch "it" (whatever we are referring to at the moment) until we say otherwise. We have taken this to his feeding time. He will not touch his food until we let him get to it, which is great!! Overall he is a really smart puppy... he is having a really difficult time learning "roll", but I'm sure he will eventually get it. Here is a video of Maki doing some tricks:

Actually, he turns one year old today!! so Happy Birthday Maki!! (this is only if he was 10 months when we first got him)

More updates to come!
- Daniel