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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Our little girl acquired new skills today.  Ones that show great development, but ones which mean more vigilance is needed by the humans! This morning she got up the first step on the stairs!  Good girl!! Then later when I was at the gym and had locked her into the kitchen, she appeared at Geoff's bedside. She figured out how to push open the gate in the kitchen so she could escape into the bedroom. Oh boy! The clearest photo of the day, though, doesn't show Aurora's new skills. If anything, I think we should have a caption contest to [...]