Nosey

So The Puppy can, at times, be absolutely wonderful and amazing and then a moment later be very very naughty.

She's decided that her belongings include not only the purple dragon and fleece camel squeak toys, but also the bed as well as my boyfriend's parents. She'll be nice and affectionate and happy with his parents, and then suddenly snap at them. She also growled at him a couple times when he came to say goodnight (although then she may have thought she was protecting me -- or the bed -- from some tall, dark, scary monster that ate her daddy's body). The bed thing we have figured out; if she growls at him, she spends the night in the crate. If she doesn't, she's rewarded by getting to spend the night with me (she's a pillow hog, by the way). As for The Boyfriend's parents, we're still working on it. We could have over-stimulated her when we brought her home, maybe giving her too much freedom too soon, and now we have to backtrack. We'll see. It's currently a work in progress.

She got a boo boo the other day; I noticed the tip of her nose was slightly bloody. Not enough to warrent a panicked, emergency trip to the vet's, but enough to make us wonder. We figured she had just scraped it on the bottom of the fence while eating grass. Well, today I found the REAL reason (I think). During dinner, I had put her in her crate, along with her food. She'll often howl and cry (as some upset Basenjis are wont to do), but she was yapping. Now, Basenjis don't bark, the closest they come is a sort of rounded yapish noise, or singular woofs. The fact that she was doing it in short succession made me wonder ... I found her nose again bloodied, and the inside of her crate smeared with it, along with numerous scratch marks. She didn't act hurt, quite the contrary; she seemed determined to get at whatever had hidden behind the wall behind her crate! Hunter indeed! We'll see if moving the crate solves the problem, but I'm definately calling the breeder tomorrow to see if there's anything else I can do!

And now for a funny and harmless anecdote; I was sitting on the bed reading Ella in Europe, a novel by Michael Konik about his six-week adventure taking his lab/greyhound mix around the European continent and examining the differences between American and European customs and habits regarding 'El Canidae'. Kire was loose in the room, sometimes curling up to lay by my side like a little brindle deer, other times grabbing up her fleece camel and subjecting it to a thurough beating. She'd throw it around, or nudge it with her snout, and then open her mouth wide and try to get as much of the toy in her teeth as possible, pulling back her jowls until there was more fleece than fur, doing all of this while trying to avoid squeaking it.

Yes, I do believe she hates the sound of the squeaker. She loves these toys, but plays with them in such a way that their beautiful SQUEAK -- SQUEAK is never heard. Reversely, if I or my boyfriend hold it out and squeak it continuously, she's all ears and eyes and trying to follow it and snatch it away so she can silence the dreaded noise! We'll weave it over our heads and behind our backs, handing it off to each other as she follows just one whisker behind, determined to tear it from the possession of two highly annoying humans and shut it up, if not forever than just for a little bit.

I should have realized something was up; the first fleece toy I gave her is all but destroyed, but the squeaker inside is left intact.

She's my silly girl, my little Miss Priss!