Duke - BUSTED!

Hi Bill & Melissa,

Duke is just fine @65 lbs. at just over 8 1/2 months old-and still gaining weight, of course. He's trying to cope with Arkansas weather which has been unbearable even for humans these past couple of months. It's been in the high 90's or just over 100, so I'm sure he longs for Black River Falls-type weather. He handles it better than we do, I think. We are very happy with him. The potty training was easy and has been a non-event for a number of months now. I think we are as trained as he is, so we seldom have an accident. He is super friendly with everyone and doesn't have a mean bone in his body. We've learned to not feed him steak bones or any bones that can be chewed down to a relatively small size because he gets tired of chewing on them and swallows what's left. Not good because that stops him up and he has diarrhea for almost 3 days before it works through his system.

Duke is a good traveler by car, motor home or our small airplane-as long as he can see us. He just settles down and sleeps. He gets a little ancy around 9:00 p.m. and we know it's time to put him in his crate in the living room for the night. He's good for at least 9-10 hours. He is good at pressing on the buzzer box when he wants out or wants attention. He now has full run of the house, but we still keep an eye on him since he's still a puppy and likes to get into things. He's happy on the ceramic floor of the bathrooms where it is cooler-and he can chew up the toilet paper and then get a drink out of the toilet if we don't keep the seat down. The other day we were gone and he got his head caught in a small waste basket with a swinging cover in the laundry room. We arrived home and he just stood there. He didn't wag his tail or anything and it was like he was saying "just get this thing off of me!"

All are amazed at his size as we are as well. He likes the cool baths we give him outside and he likes the combing /brushing as well. He's shopped at PetSmart and likes to play ball and play with squeaky toys just for the noise-especially when we are watching TV,. We try to walk about 1.5 miles each morning and he's very good on the leash. I think he'd like to chase cars if we let him, so we watch that closely. He likes to try to catch butterflies and grasshoppers which is good. He wouldn't hurt another animal at all if it (even a a skunk) came up to him. He'd just want to play.

Well, have to go now. I just wanted to way you both did a great job of training him before we picked him up which made it much easier for Carol and me. As far as we know, he's healthy in every way and we give him the Frontline and Interceptor regularly each month. Hopefully, things will just keep getting better.

Thanks again-and good luck with your new pups.

John