Two Steps Forward....

After a few weeks of saintly patience we seemed to be getting somewhere with Henry's night time anctics. He had finally quietened down and had stopped all the barking and howling and running around for no reason in the middle of the night.

The difference this made to my sleep pattern was amazing, finally I could go to sleep at 10.30 and stay asleep until 6.00am, just about a whole nights sleep.

The house training wasn't really coming along though, well it was a bit but nowhere near as well as it should have been and I needed to keep my eyes glued to Henry all the time otherwise he would go off and leave a nice smelly present for me, usually in the middle of the living room floor.

One of Henry's other mad habits was eating. I dont mean eating like a normal dog, Henry eats like a mad thing, as if he's never eaten before in his life. I suppose that being starved to within an inch of your life would make you slightly obssessed with getting every morsel of food that you can but Henry had taken this to extremes.

One of my little luxuries in life had been eating my breakfast on the sofa in the living room whilst watching the news on tv. Not any more! On emerging from kitchen with my bowl of cornflakes and milk Henry would do a very good impression of a merecat on his hindlegs whilst walking backwards and trying to get his nose into my bowl all at the same time. Being a rather big dog this meant I had to hold the bowl up above my head.

Sitting on the sofa for breakfast was a complete hazard, Henry had absolutely no manners whatsoever and tried to simply push his way past my fending off legs and eat the contents of the bowl. First thing in the morning just after I had cleaned up the nightly poo and pee and been jumped over the last thing I felt like doing was fighting with a dog for my breakfast so I took to eating in the kitchen with the door firmly shut and Radio 4 for company.

This didn't really solve anything though as it meant that no-one could eat anything in the living room, not even a chewy toffee without Henry on their lap trying to extract it from their mouth so I decided I should persist with the sofa breakfasts.

It took a few mornings but it finally paid off, I started off by standing up and holding the bowl high in the air between spoonfuls, then I progressed to sitting on the arm of the sofa using my legs to fend Henry off. After a couple of days I eventually sat on the sofa, again using my legs to fend him off at one stage he ended up standing on the sofa back looming over me from behind but I still wouldn't give in.

And eventually I could go back to my morning tv and bowl of cereal without a dogs nose in the bowl.