Toby – 9 months old already!

I cannot believe that Toby is 9 months old. It seems only few weeks ago that he arrived and yet it seems a lifetime!. He has changed so much in that time (or maybe we have changed!). All those bites and nips have stopped (sort of) and we have a pretty sensible regime.

Toby’s day starts at about 7am. Graham (usually) goes downstairs and lets Toby outside for his morning “constitutional”. Toby has an unimaginable capacity for wee/poo – where does it all come from?. He then goes back to bed until we all come downstairs and our morning gets under way – the frantic rushing and shouting as we try and get two teenage daughters upand ready for school. Toby rushes about, scratching everything and everyone with his long claws and makes a general nuisance of himself. At 7:45 the house goes quiet again as Graham goes to work and the girls catch the school bus. Toby will go back to bed for about half-hour – then he starts to yap or worse – he starts to chew the door frame or the wallpaper!

At about 8:15 we go for the first of our walks. This is usually a short walk (I am not a morning person). We go across the sheep field (trying to avoid the sheep poo which toby loves) into the second field, which is a wheat field (or was). He rushes around as if trying to create crop circles. He does huge circles around me and dashes about like a mad thing. He loves this field and does his 2nd and sometimes third poo of the day!. He tries to pull up the wheat stalks and tosses them in the air and if a bird flies up he will chase it but its a very half-hearted attempt. If he can discover some fox poo or better still and dead and decaying bird then he will not leave it and rolls around it – yuk!

We spend about 20 minutes on this walk then its back home for breakfast. He then follows me everywhere for about half an hour and then I try an get him to stay in his bed and setttle down for a while.

I should mention at this point that when I first appear in the morning Toby goes crazy . He looks around for soemthing to put in his mouth – usually his large bed blanket and drags it around and tries to give it to me. If he cannot grab anything fast enough then he grabs my arm – he never “bites” it just tries to grab my arms – eventually he replaces the bed – which is now scattered across the kitchen and picks up a toy and bring that to me, all the time jumping and dancing and spinning around the kitchen. This last for about 5 minutes before he calms down.

Toby by his bed

If you look closely at the above picture, you can see the wall on the right shows his handwork!

At about 11:30 Toby is bored and wants some company. I then go downstairs and do some household chores. If I am near the work surfaces or the cooker, Toby feels it is his duty to stand between me and the cooker and pushes his way between my legs or leans against me pinning me to the wall. This is cute, but a bit of a pain, and if I try and move I have to unravel myself from this velcro puppy.

We then have a longer walk at lunchtime (about 40 minutes) – he poos again! and then back home for a repeat of the morning. At about 4pm we go for another half hour walk – he poos again!

Dinner is at about 5:30 and then he follows everyone around jumping up on them and generally being a pesky mutt. He goes to bed at about 10:30.

At the weekend Graham is training Topby to run beside the bike. This weekend it was nice and sunny (a rare treat in itself). Toby was fantastic and ran beside the bike. He even went for a swim. Toby is not a good swimmer – he holds his head up high and just splashes like a mad thing – he loves it!

swimming - sort of!

you can see from the huge splashes that he is no Michael Phelps.

practice makes perfect

He loves the longer walks at the weekend. It is a long straight country road and it is rare to meet anyone else on this road. Lots of sheep in the fields to watch. He never chases them or barks at them -he just likes to watch them.

I want to be a sheep dog!!!

Toby has a pretty good routine and spends most of his time with me, in his bed or racing around the farm and the fields – what a life.  However, he is far from angelic.  He still jumps up people far too often, his walking on the lead is far from perfect and he chews things he shouldn’t.  If he grabs something and you tell him to “DROP” he thinks that means “lets play” and just runs off with it.  He is a terrible thief and grabs things he shouldn’t and runs off with them. 

In the morning when I put on my walking boots he thinks he should put them in his mouth and run off with them.  It is not easy putting on a wet and slobbery welly boot when you are in no mood to go out in the rain – again!  He loves a bit of wood to chew up or the odd stone to chew on.

He does not like being alone and barks to get your attention.  When I go out I put him in his newly acquired airline crate.  This serves two purposes.  firstly it gets him used to being in there ready for our big transatlantic flight to california next year and secondly I know the house is safe whilst I am out.  He never minds getting in there.  However he has found the side of the crate a nice big lump of plastic to chew on in the past, so it already looks a liitle the worse for wear.  I now have the corner covered over otherwise it will be of no use when we move:-)

Terrible picture of toby eating my welly boot!

The picture above is Toby passing me my welly so we can go out.  It is very blurred as he will not sit still longer enough to get a picture.  !

Could write loads more, but do not want to bore you with Toby Tales  all day.

Must dash –  he is eating the door frame again!