Our First Day with Gumbo
He's a Lil' Dude Now
Here's how Gumbo spends his days now:
He gets up early, at around 6:30 or whenever my husband wakes up in the morning. 98% of the time, Gumbo is completely house-trained and doesn't have any accidents overnight. My husband lets him outside, but not before he goes outside with a flashlight if it's dark to make sure they aren't any critters about. Unfortunately, there are coyotes in the neighborhood. Luckily one has never come to our backyard, but we do have raccoons, possums, squirrels, and feral cats; so we never know what's lurking outside. After Gumbo gets out the door, he races around the perimeter of the yard to see if he's missed anything overnight.
After he's done his business, he runs upstairs and snuggles up to us while we read the newspaper and do the crossword puzzles. When 10:00AM rolls around, he lets us know that it's time for his walk. It's like an alarm clock goes off in his head.
My husband has quite the battle getting Gumbo's harness on so he can attach the leash to it. Gumbo wiggles around, runs to the door before the harness gets on, and growls and nibbles on my husband's fingers until the dreaded harness is finally locked into place. Phew! We walk 30 minutes in our neighborhood and it seems like everyone notices us and waves. "Who were those people?" we sometimes ask each other when this happens. Some people we meet tell us that they didn't notice us without our dog.
After Gumbo's walk, he's pretty mellow and lets us have some peace and quiet so that we can write and market our books until he hears the next-door neighbor rumbling around in his backyard. If so, Gumbo flies out of the dog door and barks at him. Our neighbor doesn't appreciate it and lets him know, which makes us feel a little defensive and protective about our little guy.
Gumbo can sense the mailman's approach even when we can't. We always know when the mail's here. After lunch, it's tea time for us and we give Gumbo a Kong with peanut butter we insert into it. It's his one little treat he gets. Our vet told us that Gumbo needs to lose some weight, so we do our best to not give him little extras. Gumbo doesn't look overweight to us, but the vet knows best.
Gumbo Wants a Peanut
At 3:00PM, it's time to watch the bluebirds in the backyard garden and Gumbo eagerly waits at the door, until we go outside and he enthusiastically follows. The bluebird nesting box has 3 eggs in its nest and we love to watch Mama and Papa bluebird bring home various worms and insects to give their young ones. At first, Gumbo barked at the birds and acted like he wanted to catch them as they flew around, but thankfully they've all learned to play nice and he leaves them alone--for the most part. We spend about 2 hours in the backyard when the weather is nice and Gumbo loves to run around and sometimes cuddles up next to us if we're sitting on the glider.
After he eats dinner at about 6:00PM, he's ready to settle in for the night and comes upstairs with us while we watch TV. If the show we are watching has too much noise in it, such as car chases, he seems to get uneasy and goes downstairs by himself, much to our sadness. We miss him. Gumbo especially is annoyed when we watch The Larry David Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm. He doesn't realize that the arguments in the show are funny to humans.
Gumbo has come a long way since those early years when he was tearing up our CDs, albums, books, and photo albums. He has the run of the house, but no longer gets into things. Thank goodness.
He's a healthy little dog and the folks at the vets' office act like they like him when he comes to visit. He provides us with hours of entertainment and sometimes we like to just stare at him and watch his antics. We call him "Our Little Comedian" and couldn't imagine our lives without him.
Would you like to know more about Gumbo? We wrote a book about our first year with him. It's called "Our First Year Raising a Jack Russell Terrier Puppy (and then some)".
It's available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Smashwords, Kobo, and Google Play Books.
Here's a link for where you can purchase it:
