Eh, what's up doc?

Sometimes Basil's lip gets caught on his teeth and he looks at us like this. We can't help but laugh and then hug and miss him. He's so damn cute!

Basil and Basil

It's 42 degrees out this weekend and Basil has been able to enjoy some time outdoors. He even ran through the snow to get to the warm sun in the back of the yard. We can both smell spring coming (keeping fingers crossed). I started sowing my seeds indoors and Basil wanted in on the action. He kept sniffing everything like the micro manager that he is. I am looking forward to seeing how Basil will react to my garden and vegetables. In addition, Basil seems to have gotten used to the "noises" in the house with us working on the dining room and now the half bathroom.

Basil has been itch free!

It happened quite gradually, so it didn't even occur to me to post about it. Basil has been itch free for weeks. When he first came to us, we were feeding him Merrick and he was still scratching his body and chin with his back paw. Poor wittle guy. We switched to Blue Buffalo and the scratching ceased but every morning he would rub his chin against the carpet and knawed at his paws. We also think the chicken treats was causing the bit of itching. We switched to duck or lamb treats. We also switched to Blue Buffalo's fish and sweet potato dry food for breakfast and give him salmon or mackerel at night. We also give him pears, cheese and carrots quite often. Something must be working because he has been completely itch and hot spot free!

Keeping my fingers crossed!

20 Months

Basil has been with us 4 months now. He is completely comfortable with us and has been taking many liberties like jumping onto the couch and begging for food. We have had to reel some of that behavior back in. Some of the newer things he learned is telling him the "heat is on" and he will go running to the vent. He's not barking at people from the car anymore. He does slip every once in a while when he's with Keith, but I'll just put him back in check. As Cesar Milan instructed. Anticipate the behavior before it occurs and keep on it. His new thing is barking at people who approach the front door, so I'm working on that now.

We introduced carrots, salmon and mackerel. He doesn't seem to like the raw food we got him. He gobbled it up and threw up. I left it frozen and cut the food into cubes. He ate it more slowly this time but he still didn't enjoy it.

He has acclimated to the snow and cold weather. He doesn't love the snow the way his neighbor dog friends like the snow, but he'll at least go in it now. During our blizzard, he jumped across some snow that wasn't shoveled and "fell in". He was startled by that so he's hesistant to go out into the snow unless we shovel the side walk. After a while, I got tired of shoveling, but he still needed to go out of course. The solution? I would put a big foot print into the snow in order to show him the depth of the snow. He would walk into my foot print and then go potty.

I found him sitting on our bed one day just staring out the window. There aren't many places where he can comfortably look out the window and we want him to be able to do that. So I pushed an ottoman up to a window for him. Also, he sits in a cushy rocking chair while Keith works from home. That's *his* spot. He will stare out the window from the chair too, but most of the time he sleeps.

C is for cookie

I'm baking cookies for valentine's day and I turned Basil into a cookie. Mmmm yummy.

Cuddles

At night, I lay this way with Basil a lot. I put him on his back and rub his belly like I'm holding a wittle baby. He's so sweet and he loves getting this belly rubbed. The only thing I wonder is since he's technically an adolescent now is if he just finds that we're suffocating him? Does he need his space?

Basil at the window