A cure!

I blogged recently about my debilitating pawicap - Selective Hearing.

I've had so many comments from other puppies who suffer from the same affliction that I feel much better about my decision to bring it into the open and discuss it.

Then the wise and beautiful Honey commented that it is possible to cure Selective Hearing - with hard work and patience!

She said:

Your humans have to do this thing called 'Training' with you and do it often - like a little bit everyday if they can - and they also have to become Dr. Consistent and Dr. Persistent, and be very patient about repeating things with you, gentle but firm, since Selective Hearing stops you learning things quickly...and then you will find that you WILL be able to hear them after all, even if you are suffering from Selective Hearing! It's more a mind disease than an ear disease, I think, but once your brain realises you can't get away with it, then Selective Hearing gets better!

My human laughed and laughed when I showed her Honey's comment - she said that was one of the reasons why we've been doing a lot more training recently, because I had got out of the habit of doing what I was told, and she thinks that practicing every day will get me back into the habit.

I thought we were doing more training because my human loves to spend time with me and she also wants to help me earn liver treats. But, of course she loves to spend time with me, and wants to help me earn liver treats, so I think she's making up the bit about good habits - I always do what I'm told, unless I can't hear her, of course. Or if I don't want to.

Our training sessions almost never end because of Selective Hearing, either. It's usually because I steal the clicker and run off with it. Or sometimes I have a Puppy Moment. That's when I just sit there with a big smile, looking amazingly cute, but don't understand anything at all my human says to me. Actually, that almost sounds like another pawicap...

My terrible affliction

I haven't talked about this before, because it's rather a difficult subject for me, but I suffer from a terrible affliction.

And it's not just me. All around the world, thousands of puppies are affected by the same awful pawicap - Selective Hearing.

Selective Hearing can happen anywhere, anytime, for example, near interesting things, or people, or other puppies, or if it's windy or sunny or rainy, or if it's day or if it's night.

I often suffer from it when I'm stripping gum nuts off branches, and also when it's time to put my leash back on in the park. And when I'm doing something that perhaps I'm not supposed to be doing - only I can't tell I'm not supposed to be doing it because I can't hear my human.

I'm fairly sure there's no cure for Selective Hearing - if there is, I've never managed to hear my human telling me what it is. So I will just struggle on and try to live as full a life as I can, under the shadow of this terrible pawicap, as so many other puppies have done before me.

Lazy Sunday

I'm too lazy to do a proper post today, so I thought I would show you some pictures of me I found the other day.

They're from last December, when I was a little puppy - just after I decided to move in with my human.



I was really tiny and cute.



Of course, I'm still really cute!