Our resident Filipino calls Sumo, Some-more and claims it sounds nicer than Sumo. Sometimes, she calls him Sammo as in Sammo Hung (Asian pronunciation, not American).
A few days after we named Sumo, I started to regret giving him that name because he’d wrestle with us any time we tried to carry him.
Today, he’s more used to having us pat him and hold him. Yes, our ambition is to put a little lap dog in this little terrier-monster.
On the 18th of March, Sumo turned three months old.
20th of March was Sumo’s first month with us.
During this time, he’s learnt how to sit and how to go down. I use both verbal and visual cues.
However, he started to get confused between down and sit because the other two older dogs are confused and go down when you command “sit”. So I’ve gone back to teaching him sit only. And I’m starting to re-train the other two 13-year olds. Can you teach an old dog new tricks? What about two? We’ll have to see.
Sometimes I drop the verbal “sit” command and use only the visual cue and he gets it. He’s a smart dog. He learnt to sit in 10 minutes.
He can also understand “hurry up” which is the command to tell him to do his business. However, he tends to associate it with urinating more. And he shits only when utterly frustrated that I keep forcing him to “hurry up”. We’ll get there soon.
I’m now trying to get him to fetch. But he’s only doing it when he wants to.
I may have to drop fetch and go into sit-stay, which is something I’ve started to do with him at mealtimes.
Sumo started out to be really fussy with dog food. He refused to eat dog biscuits. So we pound up dog biscuits and mixed it with other food so he couldn’t just pick out the “good stuff”.
About a week later, he totally refused to eat the ground dog biscuits AND the good stuff. He insisted on eating whole plain dog biscuits only.
This continued for about a week, before I started to re-introduce other foods. Now he eats like the adult dogs.
He especially loves the mango seed and treats it like a dog bone. It’s his thing.
The first time he got it, he snatched it and ran away with it. Trying to catch him was impossible.
I didn’t like this behaviour and the second time, I put him in his pen and tried to touch him as he ate it.
Growling. Snarling. Terrible behaviour. He snapped at me twice, actually bit me two or three times.
I grabbed the mango seed and held it. He had no choice but to share it with me. He’s not as possessive over the dog bone. He will not get a mango seed from me for a while.
In contrast, although Tricky is possessive over a dog bone toward other dogs, when I take it from her, she gives it up freely and completely to me.
He displays more aggression toward me especially when playing. He doesn’t do it to anyone else.
I don’t like this display of domination. Time to show him who’s boss. Today I’ve started to walk into him to push him out of the way. I am the alpha-dog.
Sumo has grown taller and his snout longer and he’s now harder to catch. Trying to get him to be still is a challenge. Even if it’s to take a few photographs.
So, how do you do it?
First you try to hold him still.
Then he purposely looks away from the camera.
You soon realise the only way is to let him go and do his thing. Then you snap away like paparazzi and hope something turns out.
He tries to get away, but this is a piano stool and he doesn’t know if he can jump the distance yet.
Thinking about the distance.
Thinking very hard.
This way and that, he looks. Ignoring all our efforts to attract his attention and stand still for a moment.
Okay! Almost there!
.
Finally!
But it’s a crap photo.
(Photos taken 25th March 2007. Sumo aged 3 months 7 days.)