Brave, New Boy

Our neighbor Stephanie, who is also a puppy raiser, and her mom came to visit Jam on Friday and brought him his first present! Thank you!

Stephanie had been over to visit Jam the day before. She and I were sitting on the floor, petting him, and I had out a puppy nylabone that SEGD had given us as part of the puppy package we received when we get our puppy. I gave it to Jam after he started chewing on his leash. Then I noticed HRH's (Her Royal Highness's) big awesome nylabone was nearby and I moved that around. OH MY.


It was an interesting reaction. Jam was immediately afraid of it and leaped away and let out a big bark.

Stephanie and I looked at each other. That was weird. He was afraid of the bone? I moved the bone a little. He backed away and did a little puppy growl and then hiked up his back end. He inched a bit closer. I left the bone where it was. He got a bit closer and closer. I would periodically move the bone and he would jump and bark and then move closer. This was all in the space of about 15 minutes.

Then he angled in and came at the bone from the safe spot of standing half over my leg, the front part of his body by the bone, the back part on the other side of my leg.

He sniffed the bone. I looked at Stephanie. "He's a brave one. All the way over to sniffing in this short amount of time." She agreed.

By yesterday, the big bone was old hat. In fact, he would lie down beside it.

And take the occasional bite out of it.



But mostly, he just sniffed at it.



Which is good, because now that he isn't afraid of it, I am going to put it away. It's too hard for his little teeth. It's puppy bones for him.

But what a brave boy to conquer his fear in such a short amount of time over something that is almost as big as he is!