You would think our morning walk of three miles would be enough to “take the edge off” of Callie, our almost-eight-month-old Golden Retriever puppy. It’s enough to make me want to go home & take a nap. But not our energetic Callie. She did have a relaxing day, spent mostly in her crate, but in the evening she went absolutely NUTS!
At about eight o’clock, we sat down to watch the evening news (on TIVO) and to have a little dinner. At first, Callie played more-or-less patiently with her silly little Dodo Bird. It’s a stuffed bird with a funny blue beak and legs that look like twelve inches of high-tension cable.
I say “more-or-less patiently,” because she was just bouncing halfway off the walls, not all the way.
And then she started running laps. She couldn’t squeeze between our sofa and the coffee table, so she jumped three feet in the air over Barbara’s knees, ran out of the den and down the hallway, made a u-turn, ran all the way back, around the coffee table again, jumped three feet over Barbara’s knees again, and around and around at top-doggie speed.
It was absolutely hysterical to watch her little puppy ears flopping in the breeze she created. And to see her time her leap over Barbara’s knees — perfectly every time. And to watch how carefully she banked the tight turn around the coffee table. She ran at least six of these laps before she finally settled down again.
When she was finished running laps, she started to walk around the den, and I guessed that she was looking for her “stinky” (a little stuffed dog, inherited from Jamie, that she uses as a security object). I knew her stinky was behind a closed door in our bedroom, so I helped her retrieve it.
She carried her stinky down the hallway and snuggled up with it on the hallway floor, where she stayed for about five minutes. All that time she was just “gumming” her stinky puppy, which is truly stinky. (It does get washed periodically.)
Finally, knowing that bedtime was drawing near, she jumped up on her puppy pad (which was on the sofa) and continued to snuggle with her stinky puppy. Here she is:
All that after walking three miles in the morning? Where in the world does a puppy get all that energy? And how is she smart enough to know when she’s burned herself out and it’s time to relax?
Puppies are really smart!
