Joey is a fascinating boy

I absolutely adore Joey, but he IS still a young rambunctious boy.  AND he has a shoe fetish!  And jaws that can demolish anything in NO time.  So far he has managed to destroy two sets of slippers that I left sitting next to the bed.  And he chewed up the old sofa cushion that I put on the floor for him to use as a step to get up on the bed.  (Once I got rid of it, though, he did demonstrate that he can now get up there without it -- so that's a good thing.)  Oh - and that new harness I got yesterday? . . . I used it to help him get upstairs to my office earlier.  But we weren't up here 10 minutes before I heard this loud SNAP.  I thought "uh-oh -- he's broken the fastener already."  But no - what he DID do was unsnap the thing all by himself and take the harness off!  Hey - it's all I can do to open that snap myself.  It's one of those ones that you have to squeeze from two sides simultaneously.  I can't believe he managed to open it himself!!  

 So much for that "secure" harness!  Guess we'll be headed back to Petsmart this weekend to see if we can find one that he CAN'T get off.

I've also discovered that he responds best to very quiet commands.  If I raise my voice he simply ignores me completely.  But if he's doing something I don't want him to do and I say "no" very quietly with no inflection, he immediately stops and comes over to me.  But if I say it loud or if I sound angry he either ignores me or he takes whatever it is and runs the other way. 

And another thing I've discovered is that when he is given a command like "sit" or "come" I need to stay absolutely still and just wait for a good minute or so and then he may well do what I've asked.  But he's no Golden Retriever - he doesn't do anything instantly.  It's like he needs time to think about things and decide whether he's going to do it or not.  I've had a LOT of dogs over the years, but I've never had a dog quite like him before.  They've always either obeyed right away, or not done it at all.  He's different.