Dramatic Jumping.

Some videos for your viewing pleasure...

Virtua Dog.

Don't have a sniff monster to hug and squeeze? Using the tediously long video below you can experience the thrills and spills of walking your very own snausage beast through the woods.

Your personal Virtua Dog!

Highlights to look out for include; peeing, sniffing a stick and falling into mud.

What the people want, the people get.

Due to our mail server crashing from the demand to see a Dave training video we went out yesterday and recorded some tracking training in the local woods. Don't worry, there is some hand-bonking in there as well for your viewing pleasure.

Obedience and the dangers of being cute.

Dave has been attending a dog course for a few weeks. He's the star pupil! Mostly due to his love of snausages. Last week we demonstrated how a dog should follow you if you step back and Dave was basically a master of it from the first attempt. We think he would follow a snausage into hell and back. He's also mastered hand-targeting, or hand-bonking as we call it, this is where he bonks his nose against my palm for a snausage. Video to come soon!

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If cuteness could be bottled and sent into space then Dave would be the world's biggest donor. Why it would be sent into space is for scientists to figure out but on Earth it has the (un)fortunate ability of attracting attention. Here is a run-down of the people most attracted to Dave's snausage-loving face:

1. Old People.
2. Drunk People.
3. Teenage girls.
4. Scary, tattooed, immigrant, sweaty biker types.

While this admiration of Dave is understood, the noise that comes out of their mouths rarely is. Old people mumble, drunk people slur, teens talk too fast and immigrants have thick accents you couldn't push through a sieve.

Every trip on a tram is a new and exciting experience!

I'm cute, please talk to me!

Bum Nips and Crate Tricks.

Ducky!

Today we went with Dave to the training area where his obedience course starts on the 1st of September. It's an old football pitch, so is really massive. After some time two other dogs joined us, a Golden Retriever and a Rhodesian Ridgeback. The Retriever was very chilled and just walked about but the Ridgeback really loved to run so was a perfect play-mate for Dave. They chased each other like mental around and around until the Ridgeback got too excited and nipped Dave's bum. The only problem is that the Ridgeback's jaw is massive and a nip is more like a chomp. Dave ran under the bench and was pretty scared for some minutes. Then it started to rain and we all went home.

Aaarg, my bum!!

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We have always thought that Dave had no problems in being left alone in the apartment as he never makes any fuss when we leave or when we return. Just to make sure that he was okay we filmed him and it turns out that he's not so relaxed after all. After 10 seconds he tried to escape the crate! He managed to open one lock very easily. After around 12 minutes he relaxed/gave up escaping and only took to howling every now and then. So, it seems we have some work to do with separation anxiety...

Reverse Houdini.

Previous readers might recollect Dave's Houdini style escape tricks but apparently getting out of things is not his only skill. The kitchen cupboard doors close quite tightly but not tight enough. Dave's claw, twisted at a certain angle, pops the door open, giving access to 15kg of dried food heaven! This little trick was discovered after we came back from a walk. He normally goes into the kitchen to drink some water as I'm taking my shoes off and on this occasion I thought 'That water sounds awfully crunchy'. Lesson learned - if it sounds suspicious, it is suspicious.

Talking of lessons learned; frogs are always fun to pick up but they taste nasty, so now, instead of picking frogs up in his mouth, Dave prefers to stand on them.

We are always pleasantly surprised at how silent Dave is, he rarely barks. However, last week at a local dog park, a little terrier with a football obsession became deafened as Dave howled at him like a mental thing, desperate for a play-pal. The terrier was not impressed.

Recently I've been rewarding Dave with blueberries fresh from the forest during our walks. I have been rewarding myself with them also.

Some random pictures...

There's something in there!

Waiting on blueberries to be picked.

Waaaaaaa!

High bum.

Running Madness!