For a while there, I was a little worried that we hadn't gotten a proper Boxer. Krypto was very easy going and mellow for the first month. But now, trust me, he's all Boxer. When he gets excited, gravity has a tenuous hold on him at best. I can already see the "pogo-ing" in his future that is the hallmark of the happy Boxer.
First, the bad news. Housetraining is still an ongoing project. The truth is that Molly and I both get lazy and don't keep an eye on him as much as we should. We have taught him to use the doggie door and he is fairly good about letting himself out, but we need to be better about making sure that he uses it! As it is, we have an accident about every three days or so. This is my promise to you, my vast uncountable legions of readers: I. Will. Do. Better.
(A note on doggie doors. There's a totally valid school of thought that says that if you train your dog to use a doggie door, you never really know if they're actually housetrained; i.e., if they don't have access to the doggie door, will they still know not to potty inside? And while that is perfectly logical and maybe even true, I've realized that I've had three previous dogs that all were raised with access to the doggie door and all of them were absolutely reliably house trained. So, I started training without letting Krypto use the doggie door, but now I've decided to go with personal experience and play the odds. I'll let you know how it works out.)
The good news is everything else. Krypto walks quite excellently on a leash. His only difficult times are if we're walking him and Derby at the same time and Derby gets ahead, he'll often want to pull to get to her. Which creates an interesting dynamic in that each time he pulls, I stop, so Derby gets farther ahead. But it works out because eventually Derby gets so far ahead that he stops trying to pull - at which point I reward him by jogging quickly up to Derby.
He sits politely before meeting people and dogs. (Well, sometimes I have to tell him a few times, but he catches on quickly.) He rarely jumps on people (a big achievement for any Boxer owner). He's got his basic obedience down nicely with Touch, Down and his Emergency Recall ("Crime!"). I've just now gotten around to teaching him Stay. Check back in a week or two to see how he's coming along. (Like I said in my previous blog post, I've been a little lax on the obedience training just because I know that I can start it at any point.)
After his great experience at the skate park, every time he sees a skateboard, he wants to jump on it, now. So I went and bought him his own skateboard. Getting him to push it along and jump on it is no problem. Now I need to figure out how to get him to keep three paws on the board while pushing with the fourth paw. Not quite sure how I'm going to approach that...
My friends at Hollywood Paws tell me that there's often studio work for a well trained white Boxer, so I've started teaching him to hit a mark on cue. He's ready for his close up, Mr. DeMille!
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