A steep learning curve

We went to bring Mawson home on a saturday morning. I had planned to take part of the next week off work and work at home the rest of the week. Mawson got the hang of the place fairly quickly. Amazingly from day one he has organised all his personal business outside of the house, even in the first few days he did not faulter. To be fair we did get up twice every night to let a little zombie out. But  for a pup he was exemplary! Every night Martin was doing the perimeter of the house with Mawson trotting about with him. He passed from discovering the place to quite a bit of self assurance in just under a week. I think it coincided with the day Martin had to leave for a long week end away leaving me in charge of the bundle. Then the sharp teethed alligator appeared! My loving fun pup had been replaced by a bouncy needle teethed monster that reduced me to tears (and also succeeded to open up the bottoms of my preferred trousers in one swift bouncy attack!).

That is when I realised the errors of my innocent ways ... no more tug of wars.... at least until he understood that I was not a pin cushion.

The calm before the storm

After a bit of reorganisation, my cute puppy came back, he never really left, I just realised I made a lot of rooky mistakes! We set up our system in the house. Until we could trust him he would have restricted access while we were away using partition from a playpen. That worked really well and we have kept that system while increasing slowly the space until we got sure that no tasmanian devils would destroy the entirety of the house if left alone. It has worked nearly faultlessly for the whole time Mawson was in there except once.... Somehow, which is still a mystery to me as I am sure the door was closed when we left, he managed to open the door of the puppy playpen which hadn't been double locked. Real heavy for a tiny pup! He must have used a pulley system!!
Martin came back at lunch time to find this...

Tasmanian devil? Doesn't he look proud!

Interestingly, he did not destroy much at all. He reorganised a bit the place, few cushions here and there, few toys spread about, but nothing destuffed or destroyed. The only single thing he destroyed is the certificate from his early puppy school, and he did a good job at it too! We have been wondering if that was a sign or if he was trying to tell us something...
 
Time for more puppy school and obedience class then!