vertical challenges

Chili is six years old now and I can remember being fascinated with some of her puppy behaviors. I think she has passed some of her quirks on to her grand-babies.

None of my previous PWDs ever did the doggy "break dance". Almost every evening, Chili lies on her back with all four feet sticking straight up in the air and a big grin on her face and begins to flip from side to side and kick her feet up toward the ceiling, all while staying balanced on her back. Can you picture why we call it break dancing? I understand that her Grandma Star used to do this too.

Chili is also much more "vertical" than any of our other PWDs have been. As young-un she levitated in the air at my side as Stoker does, but she also explores the upper reaches of her living environment in a vertical sense also. When she was about 10-weeks old and I took her to work one day, she climbed onto a file box, from there to the top of a two-shelf bookshelf, then to a wooden counter and finally to a marble counter. A customer advised me to turn SLOWLY around and when I did, there was my tiny, fragile little puppy looking down at me, pleased as punch with herself!

One of Chili's current favorite perched positions is straddling the back of our living room couch. Perhaps Ecko gets her affinity for climbing up and perching on things from Grandma Chili...

Ecko has not been getting out to places outside of our normal routine in the last few weeks, but we are trying to remedy that.

Today she went to Jan's office briefly and got to visit with some of his co-workers. On Sunday, she is going with the big dogs to an obedience and conformation fun match and on an upcoming Tuesday she will start going to conformation handling class in a new facility and with a group of people she hasn't met before. Hopefully the rest of the little "sharks" are still making lots of new friends and going to many new places.