Poor Paddy, I had to pick up a stainless steel cat bowl we’d ordered (for our thrift-store cat feeder, details will follow) and a prescription for Lindsy and I brought him with me to our vet’s and a local pet shop. Not a single person acknowledged his existence no matter how much he looked at them hopefully. He even tried to sit politely (major self control for him) but it’s like he doesn’t exist, or worse, they literally run the other way. He finally got his wish when the tech who brought the second prescription said hi to him and gave him a pat. Paddy was over the moon.

Cricket, who wants nothing to do with strangers and makes herself as small as possible (not hard when you’re only 5  pounds to begin with) always attracts a crowd of people wanting to pet her. Personally, I’m with Cricket — social interaction is not my strong point. But we’re trying to make sure Paddy grows up well socialized and it’s hard when he’s carrying the ‘Pit Bull’ stigma, that’s one of the reasons we didn’t really want another one (another reason is the rampant health issues that plague purebred dogs, a few of which he suffers from) and had hoped he was the mix he appeared to be when we adopted him.

If my job schedule would actually let up on the 12-14 hour days, I’d like to enroll him in a class. He loves people so much he gets really excited, so we need to get him around more social situations so we can work on his training. He’s really good at home with the commands he knows but needs to have more exposure to distractions. We had a bit of a setback with what I call ‘parkarrhea’ (excitement-induced diarrhea) that’s kept us from taking him many places lately but he seems to be getting better with that. Maybe next week he can go visit his friends at Wag! – there’s an Orbee soccer ball there we know he’d love.

Paddy would like me to add that he is happy to report Joy’s training is going better. He finally managed to weasel his way onto her lap, after months of working on her…