Back home it was time to start normal post-Christmas life again. That means going to work and getting Lilli used to being alone.

Fortunately we can quite often work from home, so the transition isn’t so hard.

On the other hand, Lilli spends most of her day like this.

Lilli is growing fast. She is getting much bolder and a bit more vocal now. She will give a bark sometimes and has a tendency to nip at hands or anything that moves fast. She has also discovered that our yard is covered in rabbit poo. And also that rabbit poo is somewhat of a delicacy. We can’t imagine why, but it seems that it is quite a common complaint about dogs.

We have started trying to train her already. I have several books by Stanley Cohen, one of which is The Intelligence of Dogs. He discusses the trainability of many breeds and gives instructions on how to start training from a puppy. We have already gotten her to sit and come, at least within the confines of the house. As it says in several places, the further away the puppy is the less likely they are to respond and that is pretty true.

As a matter of interest he rates the Parson Russell Terrier as of about average trainability. That is an average dog will take 25 to 40 repetitions to understand new commands and on average obeys a first command 50% of the time or better.

That is one reason why we have started to keep Lilli on a leash outside now. She can run pretty fast already and if she took off we couldn’t catch her. Plus she is getting much braver and will frequently start heading to the trees.