We are rapidly approaching the 1st year of living with Billy anniversary, its gone so fast! In roughly 12 days it will be an entire year since we brought Billy dog home, so I thought I’d take a moment to post some thoughts and observations into the life and times of Billy dog.
Routines – Billy is all for routines, and he has a few that he keeps to each day. His morning habits change day by day – sometimes he sleeps in, other times he’ll wake us up at 3am wanting to go out, but generally he gets up with mum gets up and he’s given a few treats for breakfast. He quickly stopped eating cereal but he does like a nice bowl of milk and has developed a routine that whenever we have tea, then its only fair that he gets a little bit of milk – he even has his own little milk bowl (its very diddy and cute!). His next routine would be that of when the first person arrives home on any day when we are all out at work. Immediately he will dash to the back door and he will do a wee and run straight back in, and then insists on some cuddles before then asking to go out a second time where he will do his number twos – he NEVER does them both in the same time period, he always pees first, then cuddles inside, then his number twos – we have no idea why, but it works so we wont be trying to change it.
His night time routine is probably the most amusing. He will stay downstairs until both myself and mother go to bed. Then he will come upstairs and go into mother’s room and collect a couple of little treats she leaves out for him, he will then come into my room (his bedroom!) and sleep until I go to bed. On the sound of Windows shutting down Billy automatically goes to the back door (I still have no idea how this got into his head but its a really cool trick that works any time of day, all I have to do is shut down my computer and Billy, like a robot, goes to the back door!), he will then do his nightly piddle before coming back into the house and heading straight up to my room, as I come up the stairs he will come down three steps so he can look around the corner to collect the 1st of 3 treats. The second treat is given for him going into my room and the third and final treat for when he settles down. Most of the time this works in that he now knows its bedtime, once the lights are out he’s on his back and goes to sleep.
Whenever we forget any of the steps to his routine we know about it, either we get the disappointed doggy eyes of doom or he’ll be agitated, neither of which we like to see so we are very well trained to his routines!
Recent phobias Billy has picked up to add to the previous ones posted a while ago…
- Ice Cream vans (with music playing)
- Little friendly girls and her friends wanting to pet him (terrifies him!)
- Thunder (puts him right off his food and he sulks for a day!)
- The new surround sound system when the woofer is in use
- The vets – not exactly surprising but he now recognises the building and has issues
Recent things Billy now loves…
- RAIN – to the point Billy will get excited if he hears rain, which is great, we dont mind him getting wet and he will just stand in the garden with his head held high enjoying the feeling of rain - I suspect the drying off with the fluffy towel is what he really likes, but he does get confused when the sound of rain is played on tv, especially with the sound system.
- Trevor – took him a little longer to warm to my brother but they are best mates now, Billy even wags his tail when Trev enters the room, poor dogs been brainwashed! hehe
- Trevs bed – just don’t tell Trev! opps…