Figs The Destroyer: 12 Weeks and Counting

Right now I'm sitting on the couch with Sage on my lap, Figs has positioned herself across from us at the furthest end. She's flopping her entire 18 pound body around like a mental patient in the midst of uncontrollable fits. She's making mouth noise at Sage and also invisible objects around the room, the ceiling and perhaps even on her own back. She rolls her eyes all wonky as she postures up and makes contorted faces. I can't help but laugh out loud. The second she settles down Sage sticks out a paw and pokes her and the puppy wackiness starts over in full swing. This my friends is Figs the Destroyer.

Volume Required

Not every puppy gets an ancient conqueror's name but quite frankly this little beast has earned it. It's been 5 weeks since we picked our little bundle of spots up in Wisconsin and Figs has since made herself well at home. She's recruited Sage as her BEST friend, she's stolen our hearts along with the toilet plunger and she has managed to bind this little family together with spotted love cement.

Toilet Plunger? I'll be taking that.....

Pita Prison Break

Figs beats to her own drum. After chewing an escape hatch out the back of Sage's dog cave she insists on using this as her personal entrance and exit. She likes to find any squeaker toy Sage hasn't yet obliterated and runs barely controllable laps around the kitchen and living room at full speed. I've considered buying her a T-shirt that says ride it like you stole it. She has a little motor in her that's always full tilt with puppy rips. Sage Monkey is going to have her paws full once this beast gets full grown. But as hard as she plays she crashes and snugs just as hard. At nap time she bebops over, stumpy tail at full swing and sits like she's saying, "Ok! You can hold me now please!"

Figgy's prey drive is off the scale and I have been dying to get her out on birds. We allocated some chukar this past weekend but the temperatures were down in the double digit negatives and the snow is still too high to properly give her an introduction. At this point our hotel chukar guests are sitting pretty until January Montana weather decides to get on board or at least give us a tiny window of opportunity. Until that occurs we'll keep working on her basic commands and housebreaking which is going incredibly well. She's smart (and cute) as a whip. We also managed to get a pretty nice whoa table from a local source so when the time comes we finally have everything we need.

12 week old Lex Luther

As Fig's prey drive is so high she has a sincere obsession with the cats. I went through this with Cleo, Luna and Sage and managed to get all three to have a happy and healthy relationship with them. With that said there are always bizarre bumps along the way with each dog. In the photo above the baby gate blocks entrance to our laundry room where we keep the cat food and litter boxes. Figs WAS sitting right on the other side of the gate but quickly learned the cats won't keep regularly scheduled movement through cat central station when she stands there. So she's learned if she sits on the bottom step of the stairs and waits until they jump over she can make her move on them when they least suspect it. It's all very clever and rather Lex Lutherish for a 12 week old puppy. Lots of work on the leave it command in our future.

Hopefully the next update comes with some pics and videos of intro bird work. Until then I leave with you a video of Sage playing possum. Be sure to find us and follow us on Facebook at: Adventures of a GSP.