The last weekend in March, we adopted a dog from Homeward Bound, a local rescue agency. The name he came with was Condor, but after two days of getting caught on the “d” every time I called the dog, it became Connor.
He’s a retriever/ hound mix, with big paws, so he’ll probably end up in the large dog category when he’s full grown. He was about 12 weeks when we got him, so he’s almost 5 months now. He’s mostly black, with a white blaze on his chest, and a few white hairs on his paws, and on the tip of his chin. (I thought we could call it a soul patch, and call him sweet baby James, but no one else thought that was a good idea.)

He’s mostly house broken–he’s just not quite making it through the night yet. He has good moments and bad on the leash, sometimes pulling, and sometimes heeling. If he pulls too much I make him sit and calm down before walking more. We’re only doing one walk a day so far, but he’s out in the back yard quite a bit, and he’s learning a few tricks–fetch and sit and stay and lay down. I want to do at least 2 walks each day, but I need to get him to be well behaved on the leash at least 75% of the time before I start walking him with the kids. I can’t multitask that well when I’ve got kids on the swings, in the dirt pile, and a dog eager to meet every other creature that wanders past.

One of the reasons we’re a little lagging in the training is Connor contracted Parvo virus a week after we got him. He was at the vets for a week on an IV, and I couldn’t walk him for another 2 weeks, because he was still shedding virus. He’s better now, thank goodness.

Temperamentally, he’s, as Cesar would say, a medium energy dog. He’s a little timid, very friendly, and has a big bark which sounds scary. He keeps asking the cats to play with him, but all they do is run away, or threaten to swat him if he gets too rambunctious. Basically he’s an average dog, which is good, because that’s what I wanted. 🙂