We are still dealing with yesterday’s mastery of the up-staircase by Aurora. It’s cute, but it’s also a pain.

She is enjoying being able to cut short the sessions outside where she is told to do her doggy things.  Well, she’d like to cut these sessions short by running up the stairs and going inside. We’ve started closing the backdoor when we go out. Sigh!

The fun part for the humans is watching Aurora’s different approaches to the recently conquered stairs. Sometimes she struggle to pull herself up one step at a time. Other time she bounds all the way up. Why struggle and then bound? Hmmm?!!!

The humans themselves had a busy day! Paris had an ultrasound so we had to take her to the vet’s office at 8:45 and pick her up at 4. Geoff’s office had its holiday party, and Galen got to talk to a judge (but not for himself!). Fortunately, Uncle Tony came over and helped the pack mid-day.

Today’s picture came after the humans had unwound and were happy to supervise the play session in the backyard

Day 75 — Eating is Playing, Says Aurora

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Well, it happened.

About 5:45 this morning, I had taken Aurora out for her housetraining. She told me several times that she was fine and didn’t need to go out.

A couple times she turned away from the backyard and went up the four stairs she’d just mastered yesterday evening just to show me how done she was with the backyard. She’d try to reach the pack members just inside who were taunting her with how comfortable they were inside. Each time I went up to the landing and brought her back into a spot where previous biological activities had taken place.

She finally produced, and I let her run up the stairs to go back inside to join the other pack members. Her lightened state apparently enabled her to jump up the final step.

Yep. She made it all the way up the stairs into the house on her own. An accomplishment!

Crud! We aren’t safe any more!

I didn’t expect that the final step would be overcome so quickly!

We celebrated briefly, and then the whole pack went to sleep with Geoffrey while I went off to the gym. Later I did have the camera ready for the mid-morning playful attack of the agapantha roots.

Day 74 — Celebrating with a bit of Agapantha Root

The big development of the day occurred late, out of the range of any camera. Aurora made it up four steps from the backyard to the landing tonight!

True, she made her way up the steps to end the tedious patrol of the backyard I was insisting on because I wanted her to “Go do doggie things.” She insisted that she had no biological needs, and I had been insisting that she needed get in touch with her own body.

Instead, she turned toward the stairs and slowly, with great effort, climbed all of them to the top of the landing. There she sniffed around after gauging that the big step inside was beyond her strength.

When I lifted her back down to the yard to “Do doggie things!” she would have none if it. This time she went up the stairs to the landing at a pretty good clip.

I gave up (and saw no biological punishment from Aurora) after the third time she went up the stairs. This time I helped her over the big step, and she went bounding inside.

Unfortunately, today’s picture of mother and daughter simultaneously clamped on the tennis ball doesn’t capture the momentous progress of the day. But, I think it’s still a cute look!

Day 73 — MY Ball!