Hinckley's Vacation to Berkeley

Jo is out of town for the next few days, so I am watching Hinckley in her stead. My constant contact with the little pup today has reaffirmed a few reasons why I think Jo is doing an unbelievably good job preparing him for the world and/or why he is uncommonly intelligent:

1. No accidents in my apartment so far. I put pine shavings on a small patch of dirt outside my place and he has taken that as a call to action to fertilize the area. More impressively, after having only been out once, he went to my front door when he needed to go, looked back at me, and whimpered. I opened the door and he immediately ran down and went. Smart puppy!

2. Mastery of a ridiculous eating process. Hinck devours his food from a bowl in under a minute, so Jo feeds him about 1/3 of his food in a Kong and the other 2/3 in a food ball. The kong is simple: imagine a strong rubbery toy in the shape of a snowman, except it's hollow and has a big hole at the bottom. You put food in and he gets it out. A plebeian pooch would try to roll and lick until the food comes out; Hinck quickly realized that he just needed to pick it up, get the hole to face down, and shake it. Then he runs around sucking up the food like a vacuum cleaner. This, as you might imagine, doesn't slow down the eating process much, so the next step will perhaps be to seal the opening with peanut butter and freeze the kong -- that way, he has to like the peanut butter seal enough so that it thaws before food will let loose.

I've perhaps spent too much time on food already, but his other food device is too good not to discuss. The food ball looks like an oversized golf ball (about 6 inches in diameter), except one of the divots is actually a hole. The ball is hollow, so you stick food in it, he rolls it around, and food comes out. You might think that this is just as easy as the kong, but no; there is a cone system going on inside the ball that means the food has to make its way into the cone before it can come out. It's hard even for me. But Hinck has gotten to the point where he can get every last bit of food out within a half-hour.

3. Respecting my property. I will say that this does not hold true at Jo's apartment, but maybe Hinck had an intellectual shift this morning and he's not just being nice because he's in an unfamiliar place. Whenever he digs his head into something that he shouldn't (couch, recycling, wires, my face, etc), and I've said "NO," he has stopped and walked away. Incredible!

4. Not barking. He hasn't barked once since he's been here. Not even when i attached his leash to a pole outside of a store and went in to get something. I thought for sure he'd bark when he could no longer see me (I was secretly watching him the whole time), but he just sat and had a few people pet him.

All in all, it's been a good day with the Hinckmaster General. The only problem -- if you can call it that -- is how popular he's been on walks. It takes forever to go on a walk because so many people want to stop to pet him! On our first walk of the day, I chose a busy route because I thought it would be fun to hear the "Ohh puppy!" coming at us every few seconds. By the last walk of the night, we ducked into an alley in order to avoid the line at the ice cream shop (Ici) that's near me.

That's it for today. Hopefully the next few days go just as well -- and hopefully he takes more good naps like the ones he took today so that I can get more work done!