Last night our little boy Bruno graduated from doggy school level 1 at Twin Cities Obedience Training Club. We couldn’t be prouder. It’s actually kind of amazing to think about what he’s all learned in the last 9 weeks. When we first brought Bruno home a mere 2 1/2 months ago, he sort of knew "sit", and he was pretty decent on walks. Now he sits, lays down, stays, stands, shakes, rolls over, heels, and more. Granted, not perfectly every time, but pretty darn close.

Last night’s big tests were weaving through cones by leading him with my hand, and heeling down to one side of the ring, doing a u-turn, sitting him, staying him, and then leaving him there, walking down to the other end of the ring, releasing him from the stay and calling him to come to me, and having him sit when he got there. Ohh, he made his parents proud.

He will miss his friends Boomer, Brandy, and especially Amelie the pug, but there will be more dog friends in his future. Level 2 will have to wait until after broomball season, but I think Bruno is already well on his way to being the best trained dog in the world that Nate dreams he will be. And speaking of Nate, I’d like to give a little shout-out to him for picking up the at-home training while I’ve been under the weather. Shaking, rolling over, and standing? All Nate. Well, and Bruno I guess.

The first picture is the certificate Bruno got for completing Level 1 (it only has Nate’s name on it because he’s the one who registered him for class). The next one was during one of our training classes a few weeks ago. And the last one is Bruno with the best trainer in the world, Dani, the Dog Whisperer.

Yesterday was Bruno’s 1st birthday. He had a party. We got him a doggy birthday cake from the craziest store in the world, Lulu & Luigi. It was like wheat wafers and yogurt or something. Here’s a picture. He and his friend Casey split it, and it sort of ended up all over our basement, but what to do, a dog only turns 1 once! Casey’s mom and dad, Sonja and Greg, gave Bruno a squeeky ball and a doggy energy bar for when we take him hiking or something like that. Nicole and Gretchen brought him a bacon and cheese biscuit and an awesome tug rope with a bone attached to it. There was also people cake – I’ll try to post a picture of that soon – it said Happy Birthday Bruno and had candy bugs and worms on it, because Bruno likes to eat bugs and worms. hee hee. All the people friends in attendance also got to sample some of Nate’s latest brew, Bruno’s Porter. mmmmm. And of course, there was much admiration for our awesome new skylight and recessed light in the kitchen. Bruno also got another present in the form of the first snow of the season! We were wondering how he would react to cold and snow, and it seems that he is a big fan. Last night and this morning on his walk he was bounding around, playing in the snow and flying around on the ice, happy as could be. Yay! And we may not ever have to shovel our deck or back walk, because he spent quite some time eating the snow off of it. Best. dog. ever.

Bruno had his first puppy play date since we’ve had him on Sunday. My new friend Sonja is a grad student in the same program as me and we share an office. She and her fiance Greg have a one and a half year-old black lab, Casey, and we talk about our dogs constantly. They’ve had Casey since he was a little bitty puppy, so she’s been a great resource for me to talk about stuff that’s going on with Bruno and get advice and ideas. So on Sunday Nate and I took Bruno over to their house to meet Casey. They were instant best friends! Casey is actually about 80 pounds, about 15 more than Bruno, but they were a perfect match. We were there 2 or 3 hours and they never stopped! They tore around the house after each other, wrestling, playing keep-away, tug-of-war. It was the cutest thing in the world. Bruno gets to be around lots of other dogs at doggy school and occasionally meet other dogs on his walks, but he hasn’t been able to just play, play, play. And Casey knows lots of other dogs, but none that are of comparable size so he always has to play a little less hard. So this was a wonderful thing for both of them. And it turns out that Sonja and Greg are fellow good beer enthusiasts, so Nate and I may have made new best friends as well!

Well I’m glad to see that Nate at least had a good day. Sunsets, Boston, Ducks and all. I on the other hand have had somewhat of a challenging day. It consisted of the following. Driving Nate to the airport at 4:30am (he was planning on taking the light rail and I insisted on driving him. Not sure why). Intending to get a couple more hours of sleep when I got back home, but not having that happen because a certain dog was just plain ready for the day. Taking dog for walk #1 and ending up pulling something out of his mouth that I thought was a wood chip, but realizing once it was in my hand and I got a whiff of it that it was in fact poop. Gagging for the rest of the day every time I thought of it, which I did often. Having dog drop his 80 pound bone on my pinky toe. Spending a lengthy time trying to encourage dog to pee so I could leave for work as he just sat and stared at me. Getting to work 10 minutes late. Being on my feet for 8 hours. Spending a good portion of my 1/2 hour lunch break (not nearly long enough to actually eat a meal in my opinion) trying to solve a friend’s crisis. Coming home and taking dog for walk #2 in the cold rain. Singing Guns n Roses "Cold November Rain" in my head the entire time. Coming home and finding an enormous centipede on the wall in the basement waving its front legs at me. Killing said centipede and having half of its body drop into a pile of stuff below, I’m sure to be found at a later terrifying date.

But the good news is that things improved. Katie and Gretchen had their housewarming karaoke party, and it was soooooo fun. I have now been up this morning for hours. I have fed, trained, walked and played with Bruno, and am now sitting waiting impatiently for Nate to wake up so we can go to the Chatterbox and have brunch and bloody marys! I think someone is about to get steamrolled…