Weirdly we had a conversation about coffee wood chews at the dog park the other day and my friend said exactly the same thing about them splintering. I thought we had one for Bill but perhaps it was an olive wood one. He's not as demented a chewer I think as some of your pups. All the good ones seem to be horrible dried body parts. For ages I was giving him a vile hairy rabbit foot once a day which he happily crunched up but at the moment he will only eat pork spaghetti, which I believe is dried intestines - we call it the stinky farty chew. When I say we, I mean when I'm chatting away to the dog and he's looking at me like I'm a bloody lunatic.
We are still doing 1-1 training, and still seeing a lot of the back end of a gambolling dog as Bill chases the swallows nesting in the trainer's paddock. Last week we had to use a cone as a pretend dog so I could be trained in the absence of Bill (or his brain, at any rate) 😄But bizarrely enough it's working fine - the trainer sets me homework each week and when I can get Bill's attention, he does everything I ask of him, and I can see the progress each week, which is fab.
I had loads of leave left, and never know what to do with myself if I don't travel anywhere, and can't do much of that with himself yet, so instead I've booked every Friday off pretty much till September. So today we took a lovely long walk on the Common and I was actually able to drop his line for almost all of it - I've not had the confidence to do that since before Christmas. Granted, it was a rainy weekday morning, therefore almost empty of other people, dogs, and swoopy birds, and most of the horses were hiding somewhere, and I did have to pick up his lead before we came near any of the above, but still - he was fab, spotless recall and even asked me for permission to dig up molehills (which he wanted to do instead of retrieving, but he'd so clearly asked if it was okay I couldn't say no). I know it's a one-off, but you really need those good days, don't you?
Oh and while I think of it - the little sod - I picked him up from daycare yesterday and actually had a chance to ask how he was getting on, i.e. how much of a nobhead was he being with other entire males, did they have to separate him, etc. etc. He's fine, they said, he's been out in the garden with a load of other dogs all today, including two other entire males. Okay, I thought, giving him a Paddington Bear Hard Stare, perhaps he knows them well, or they're really big dogs, and it's only dogs his size or smaller he has an issue with? One was a pocket daschund. I swear to God I will never understand his nobheadery.
I have really missed boring the pants off you all! I must post more often. First I'm going to go and find all the threads @CoubousAndTourmalet has been posting on and have a read 😄