Craig's Paris Hilton Dog

When unpacking from out Memorial Day Weekend trip, Toby kept sniffing at our bags. Finally, Craig decided to try and put Toby inside one of the bags. At first he kept trying to hop out. But, once Craig had the bag up on his shoulder, I think Toby realized jumping from that high wouldn't be the best decision, so he just went along for the ride! I'm sure at some point we'll have to buy a carrier bag for him in case we need to take him on the plane for a vacation sometime! :)

Happy (Belated) Memorial Day!

We had a great Memorial Day Weekend with Courtney and Chris! We all went down to Chris's place, south of Raleigh, and spent the weekend hanging out on his boat, playing games, eating, drinking and just hanging out. Chris has a house in a neighborhood that has a private lake! Very Cool! The water was refreshing since the air temperature was warm.

We brought Toby with us and he went for his first boat ride! He even went swimming - not willingly, though! I think he was happy to be cooled off from baking in the sun, but he wasn't the biggest fan of the water. We put him in a few times off the back of the boat and he would immediately turn around and swim back and try to get back in the water! Once, Craig even tossed him in the water and he went completely under! That was all on the first day!

The second day, Toby loved the wind blowing in his face while Chris drove the boat really fast, but he found himself a shady spot and just snoozed while the rest of us chilled and swam. No swimming for Toby on the second day! He was tuckered out after that! He slept on my lap the whole drive back to Wake Forest!

I have lots more pictures, but I'll try to get them set up on a slide show at another time. In the meantime, here's a sample of our fun weekend! Thanks to Chris and Courtney for being excellent hosts! We had a great time! :)

A+ for the First Day

This weekend was Toby's first day at school! There were 9 puppies in the class, most of which were pretty large mixed breed dogs! There were two other smaller dogs there: a Minature Schnauzer and a Westie - and they were both quite high-strung! Toby was so calm when he "met" all the other puppies. He almost seemed a little scared, but he was still interested. He's met lots of other dogs, large and small, around the neighborhood, but he's only met them one or two at a time. Meeting 8 other puppies at once was maybe a little intimidating. He was so well behaved! Here's a picture of him "meeting" some of the other puppies. The beginning of the class was spent just letting the dogs get to know each other. What a bunch of cuties!

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Toby got an A+ from the instructor for a couple things! He was one of the calmer dogs in the class, and surprisingly, he wasn't easily distracted by all the other puppies. Don't get me wrong, there were plenty of other very smart dogs there, but I'm biased! Craig and I were so proud of him. He did a perfect "Sit" and "Down" for the instructor, and at any time I asked him to by himself. Craig said he looked really cute when we were practicing the "Heel" command - he said Toby looked like a little show dog prancing next to me and looking up at me for his treat! :) He does the "Stay" command really well, but we were teaching him a little ahead of what they wanted us to. We were jumping right into "Come" after he says, but they want him to just be able to say and have us walk around him and see if he stays on his own without waiting for the "Come" command. So, we have to work on that.

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The clicker training is REALLY working for Toby! It's amazing! He really understands that CLICK = TREAT and because of that we can make him learn almost anything! We'll keep you posted on his progress. We're just so proud of him right now. He slept good last night after all that hard work! :)

Toby misses Adam :(

This post is a little overdue, but better late than never. Toby got so much attention while Adam was visiting! He was definitely going through withdrawl the first few days after he left. Adam and Craig were up late a couple nights, and often didn't put Toby in his crate until the wee hours of the morning. He slept, but it was either on one of their laps, on the chair or on the couch with one of them. The first few nights after Adam left, we put Toby in his crate at night just like we usually do. He whimpered and cried quite a bit the first couple nights. He hasn't done that since the first week we had him!! He's better now, but it took a while.

Adam also taught Toby how to dance! Check out the video below! :) (notice the beer never leaves Adam's hand!)

Here's Proof!!

We were wondering if Toby was still small enough to sneak out of the kitchen through the small gap under the kitchen cabinets. Well, here's proof that he's still a skilled escape artist! :)