When Martin's away, the Mawson dances

Martin and I are both marine microbiologist. However, Martin is the hardened sea dog who keeps going away on research voyages onboard various ships and floating things. I might digress onto what we are actually doing in a future post, because really... that's "pretty cool"!
Anyway, what all this travel means is that I am often left with Mawson for extended amount of time. I realised last time that I had never left the house for a trip away without mister pup, even overnight, ever since he came in the house :O !!

The first long trip away from Martin was a bit hard for pup, I could not even mention the word daddy without having a crazy puppy running to the front windows wagging his tail until the tail detached... (ok not literally) and then coming back with a dejected little face. The subsequent trips have been much better and he is now resigned to being abandoned.
The thing is, I think he actually quite likes it now because I tend to overcompensate and spend every single spare second of the day doing fun things with him. His morning run was nearly doubled in length, we did jogging and walks in the evening with a lot of play time and training and then a cuddle for the rest of the evening until way past normal bedtime. And also my whole weekends were pretty much Mawson-time with variety of trainings on saturdays and beach runs or long walks on sunday, without forgetting a piece of beef shinbone every sunday afternoon (that one was for me to put my legs up for just one hour!).

mmmmm shinbone....

So, I am pretty sure that Mawson has a lot of fun when Martin is away and that showed a lot in the monster's training and obedience with me. The main issue is that I end up exhausted!

Sunday morning stroll

After a week of torrential rain, we got a beautiful week of sunny winter days. Sometimes I really wonder about the seasons in Australia?! Anyway, sunday morning was bright, sunny and cool so I decided to go for a "long" walk with Mawson, while Martin was playing the little winemaker.
We ended up walking for nearly 12 kms, and it was the best walk of Mawson so far! It was all the more impressive that this was a new route we had never walked before. Usually, in this case, he has to check every single blade of grass or stone on a 2 m radius around me for every square millimetre we pass close to. But not too much this time! and it was very agreeable. There was still sniffing about and a lot of fun, but I got to enjoy the walk as well for a change.
Not a lot of people were around, I guess a combination of sunday morning, cold, and sunday morning... But that meant that on the way we saw quite a few birds checking out the gardens, and yet again Mawson had a stand off with a currawong. Those always last for a while until I get enough of it and either shoo the bird off (they are pretty cool customers those ones) or have to somehow get mister pup moving.

During our walk, we saw the best bus stop I have seen so far here... guess somebody got fed up to wait for the delayed bus or maybe they like a bit of comfort... either way I had to take a pic!

The latest Sydney design for bus stops

The good thing is that walking this new route gave me some more ideas of other new routes for the week ends. I like to vary a bit from the week evening walks and also I rarely do 10kms plus every evening!

I'm so smooth!!!

Yay!! Woohooo!!!

That's it!
I've taken over the blog, I stole the computer while the slaves were busy preparing dinner, and they have not even noticed!

I'm sorting out my own page yup and I'm going to write what I want on here. I'm just slow cause I have  big paws. Very adequate for a GSP of my standing I might add, thank you very much! But that keyboard has got some seriously small letters.

Anyway, mum won't be able to get that blog back.

Oh what's that the fire is on! oh let's go lay in front and roll about, yeah!!!

Sorry folks got to go!

Walk vs run

I have recently discovered that Mawson is better at jogging than he is at walking.
Not that, he is bad at walking but he gets distracted by smells or the worst thing: rabbits! Then I get a zebulon on springs and I am fast running out of shoulders... We've been working on that and he now keeps it together pretty well, most of the time...

However, when I go for a jog, he very quickly gets in his stride next to me (all is relative of course!). He doesn't pull me about, stop to sniff or zig zag like crazy in front of me, which makes the whole thing quite pleasant. He is happy prancing and trotting by my side.

The only thing is I am better at walking than jogging.... But he is a real motivator. He goes quite steadily so he is a pretty good pace keeper and I somehow feel like I don't want to let him down by stopping or I will get the disappointed look back that tells me I am really a weak softy who can't run for 4 kms every evening after work... Somehow it shouldn't bother me that Mawson gives me the "look" but actually it does, so I keep going. No wonder my dog is weird, I think I might be weird too!

Off limits

I know that there are a lot of different views on this matter out there, but both Martin and I agreed early on that Mawson would not be allowed on furnitures. Either beds, sofas, chairs... We originally had a few other agreements... but this one is the main one that is and will still be standing.
One of the major reason, other than trying to make keep some sorts of boundaries, is that Mawson has got a big bum and he doesn't know how to share (I've learnt that from the only time I caved in).

Sneaking up when he was still trying to win!

To be fair, he has a dog bed that is comfier than the current sofa we have in the salon and far more spacious. The funny thing is that he now knows it and he doesn't even go on the sofa when we are out. Not that he even attempts it while we are in either. Now it is mostly when I am watching the telly or trying to do something on my computer that there is a sneaky bum nonchalantly getting placed on the side of the sofa. It starts with just a slight leaning and then a shift...then a rearrangement while looking around innocently. I can't say anything all 4 paws are still firmly on the ground...barely. He still doesn't win anymore space.

I am on it, can't move me!
This move resulted a few seconds later
in the full sofa getting tilted and a very
offended despatched GSP on the floor.

The only time we share is when we go camping and I am usually the one with a snuggled puppy while Martin sleeps like a baby. I have to confess that I love it, except for those paws up my nose, the wriggling and the occasional kick in the guts, oh and the snoring, ok I stop here...

Funnily, after starting to prepare this post, I read the last post from another GSP blog today (Otto's dog blog) and Otto seems to have the same problems as Mawson with "mean" parents not letting him and his brother get on sofas or bed.
Luckily for me, I only have one little monster to deal with and not a tag team trying to weaken my resolve.