While I could be addressing our early, unseasonable heat wave (we’ve been in the 90’s the past couple of days) I’m really just talking about the pupster. I’ve got to take him out today to get his shots updated and pick up some flea meds for the pupster and the kitkat.

You see, the little guy has his interview tomorrow with the folks at his soon-to-be doggy sleepaway camp. We’ve decided to reach out and try a new place for our upcoming Memorial Day weekend to Sonoma trip. But before you can leave your dog in a free-range facility, he needs to go through an extensive interview process. I’m actually quite nervous.

While he has a great knowledge of many commands, well, we’ve all gotten lazy here and haven’t really enforced the whole single command thing. So while he knows exactly what “sit” means, he’ll just look at you like you’re crazy instead of just sitting his butt down. Though more often, if you have a treat in hand, he skips “sit” and goes right to “beg”. Then of course, there’s “down” – man, as a pup in class he was the example of how to break your dog and teach him who is in charge (he peed he got so scared). So to this day, if you say “down”, he’ll talk back. Eventually, he’ll get down, but not after some complaining and it will be totally half-assed. Funny thing, if he’s in bed or on the couch, he will totally do “down” the first time you ask, and even understands “head down”. But on the floor, he hates it.

So do you think they’ll be impressed that his best command is “no squeak”? I mean, he loves those squeaky toys and they drive me crazy. So he knows when we say “no squeak” that he drops it and grabs a silent toy instead. It’s actually pretty cute to see. But I’m guessing it’s not an official command so it probably won’t win him any points, huh?

Oh well, I guess I’ll just continue to work with him. I have until 2:00PM tomorrow to get him to listen on the first command. It could happen. I mean, if he wasn’t so damn contrary – let’s home they welcome contrary at their facility.

Imagine this little face being the model for contrary pups back in his school days…