Charlie

I was on the couch and before I knew what was up, Thor was all over
me, licking me as if I were the sweetest treat in the world.

"What is this and why is it here?"

She explained it was a friends and wasn't it sweet? "Yeah sure" Its
sweet", I deadpanned. Strangely enough 10 minutes later, I heard
something inside me say, maybe we should get one.

And that was after she told me what they cost.

So, I spent the next week looking. There were, of course, lots of
perfectly adorable Cavalier pups for sale, but once I got into the
research, I quickly realized that the most important factor in
getting a pup wasn't the pup but the breeder; all the pupds are cute.

Even then it took a week to find a breeder I was comfortable with and
I was only able to do that after a recommendation from Anne Eckersley
in Connecticut. For an entire week I tracked down breeders, emailed
and called with questions and ,I will tell it truthfully, I was
getting very frustrated.

Now to the good part. We only had to wait five months and after
having him for two weeks I can say he was well worth the wait. We
did have high expectations, but he has far exceeded anything we
imagined he might mean to us.

We took him north to the big city of Astoria after the first week and
when we walked him along the boardwalk and then into town, we kept
hearing the same comment when folks first saw him bouncing along on
the leash:

"Oh MY GOD"!!! Thats what they said, at least SEVEN times.

So, he's cute. Thats for sure. And what about his
intelligence/personality? Heres what he has learned in two weeks,
with notes on training times:

1.crate friendly: when we got him, from DAY ONE.
2.sleeps all night: ditto.
3.house broken: mostly. we had some confusing construction going on
which disrupted his routine, so he has tinkled inside several times
in two weeks, but it was our fault due to the confusion, etc. and
just a few tinkles from a new puppy is OK, after all, isn't it? We
are working on establishing a better routine. and we are not
worried. he goes outside most of the time by far.
4. walks on a leash: that took 15 minutes and he couldn't be better
at it (it MUST be in the blood).
5. sit: a couple of hours. lie down: ditto. Crawl: ditto. Stay:
ditto. flip over: he does it when he wants to, although he did do
it four times when we first taught it too him.
6. come: ditto, although we are working on consistent coming at ALL
times.
7. fetch: hes doing it.

(And thats not the best part: The best part is not what he's learned
but just who he is, how he looks at the world, how he reacts to it
and to us).

I could go on, but you get the point. Now you folks are cavalier
savy and probably find all this unspectacular, but we are not. We
are used to NORMAL dogs that take time to learn things and who are
cute but problematical as puppies.

So we are thankful and so very, very glad we have our new Cavalier
puppy. I told Linda Kornhi that we expected a lot when we got
Charlie. Truthfully, we had no idea how great it would be to have
him. We didn't come to the meeting this month cause he hasn't had
his final shots and we didn't want him to be around many other dogs
yet, but we hope to be there next month and meet everyone with our
new little pup, Charlie, THE WONDER DOG.