does it ever rain in Seattle?
Mango at 13 weeks old.
About three and a half weeks ago, Mango weighed a little less than 8 pounds. Last night, Mango weighed in at 11.8 pounds 
Nowadays, Mango is probably eating about three times the amount of food that he was eating when he first arrived home from the breeder.
Mango at seven weeks old.
Mango at 13 weeks old.
The most obvious differences: Mango’s snout has gotten longer and his ears are bigger.
I spent part of Saturday night and Sunday morning working so i get to take today off. By taking today off, it saves Smelly a few trips between work and her condo since i will be taking care of Mango.
Mango spooked by the construction noise coming from one of my backyard neighbors.
I took Mango for a walk around the neighborhood. For whatever reason, the first part of the walk along Hudson St has been the hardest. There is something along that portion of the walk that Mango does not like. I guess whatever that he’s having a problem with, he just has to get used to it. On our way on Dawson St walking toward California Ave, there are a few patches of healthy-looking lawn. Mango loves to walk on these few patches of grass. Mango took care of his business right there, both #1 and #2 simultaneously.
A few posts ago, i mentioned that Mango was losing his puppy hair. A coarser and longer hair has started taking over, beginning from his tail on. Other than his head, there are only a few small patches of puppy hair on his body.
You can see Mango no longer has any puppy hair on his back.
I spent part of the morning training Mango on the sit, stay, down commands. Mango is still not able or unwilling to go “down” on command, without having a treat or pretending to have a treat in my hand. He seems to be able to “stay” better now, at least he can remain sitting when i move backward away from him with a treat in my hand.
Mango in his donut bed.
Mango had been doing quite well with not peeing in the house. When i was eating my lunch, Mango walked near the closed backyard door. Because he was not sitting while facing the door, i did not think that he wanted to pee. No more than a few seconds later, Mango peed almost right in front of me. I had to lift him off the floor and put him in the backyard while he was still peeing. The pee pattern on the floor clearly indicated what i did. There was a big pool of pee and then there was a trail of pee all the way to the door 
Waking up from his afternoon nap.
Mango has been scratching himself since he arrival home the first time on July 19th. I could not figure out what is causing him to scratch. Initially, i thought it was the Rosemary plants in the backyard. On the first few days home, Mango was going in and out of the Rosemary bushes. Even after fencing off the Rosemary plants, Mango was still scratching himself.
About two weeks ago, Mango started to shed his puppy coat. He appeared to be scratching himself quite a bit more than usual. So i decided to have Mango bathed on the Friday when i was working from home. I called around all the nearby Pet grooming places but they were all booked up. Finally, i gave up and decided to bathe him myself. I found a nearby do-it-yourself bathhouse for pets called The Wash Dog. At this facility, shampoo, bath towels and the very important power dryer.
Mango looking wary before being bathed (picture taken with my iPhone camera).
Oh boy…there is no escape (picture taken with my iPhone camera).
This was the first time that i have given Mango a bath. He had been bathed by the breeder in the past but the breeder was not able to give him a bath during his daycare that week. Surprisingly, Mango did not put up a fight when he was being sprayed with luke warm water.
Mango almost completely soaked (picture taken with my iPhone camera).
Get me outta here! (picture taken with my iPhone camera)
The next thing i did was to massage some shampoo into his wet hair. The breeder told me in order to loosen a Shiba’s shed hair, the massaging process is important. Then i attempted to express Mango’s anal glands. I was not sure if i did it correctly. What expelled out of Mango’s anus did not seem to be like what i saw when the breeder was demonstrating a bath to me.
Mango after being rinsed (picture taken with my iPhone camera).
After rinsing the lather off Mango, i placed Mango back on the grooming table and used the pretty powerful dryer to blow dry him. Because Shibas are doubly-coated with the outer coat being stiff and straight and the undercoat soft and thick, i was informed that a normal blow dryer is not powerful enough get the loose hair out. I was not sure how much loose hair i got rid off but when i got done, i could feel Mango’s hair all over me.
Looking good and smelling clean after the bath (picture taken with my iPhone camera).
The bath did not seem to help with Mango’s scratching. In fact, it may have gotten worse. On the following Monday, Smelly took Mango to the vet to have his scratching problem looked at. His stool analysis came back negative - no parasite was found. The vet gave Mango an unknown shot and told Smelly to give Mango half a table of Benadryl every 12 hours.
Something in my backyard must be causing him to scratch. I am still going through the process of elimination to find out what is the culprit.
Mango’s puppy training certificate
This post is a week old. Last Saturday, August 16th 2008, was a special day for Mango. That was the day Mango graduated from Diane Rich’s puppy training class!
We are not slacking off though. We enjoyed training with Diane so much that Smelly promptly enrolled Mango in another set of private lessons with her.
On arriving home after our weekly Co-Rec soccer match (we got beat 2 - 0), Smelly and i found the baby gate flat on the kitchen floor. Mango had busted out of his gated pen. The first thing that Smelly and i did was to make sure Mango did not pee in the house. The first floor, all hardwood, was clean. Then i took Mango out to the backyard to poo as i thought he had not taken his dump yet. Three hours earlier before we left for the match, i took him out for his customary after meal poo. I spent close to 30 minutes with him in the backyard but all he did was to pull, tug and chew on the leash.
After circling around the backyard for several minutes, it appeared to me that Mango did not seem to have any interest in dropping his load. It was when Smelly came downstairs and told me i could take Mango back in the house as she found a big pile of doo doo and a pool of pee in the hallway on the carpeted second floor. I was upset. There we were tired and sore from the match and we had to deal with his mess. There was no point disciplining or correcting Mango as we did not catch him at the moment he was doing it.
Mango: What ‘cha looking at? I did what i had to do, just not where and when you wanted me to.
Mango seemed to sense that we were not too happy with what he did. When he climbed up the stairs in his attempt to go up to the second floor again, he was chased down. After being yelled at for chewing on some shoes, he started whining, like what he normally does when he refuses to give in to my command for him to eliminate in the backyard.
But no one can get upset at this little bugger, at least not long. Mango and us made up later and everything is good now.
Yesterday was another relatively busy Saturday since Mango has join the household. In the morning, Smelly and i had to brave the roundtrip traffic going across the lake to Redmond for Mango’s third training session. The traffic was especially bad because I-90 was shutdown between 1245 and 1500 for annual Seafair’s Blue Angels aerobatics display.
Mango - half dog and half plastic tunnel.
In today session, Diane continued to work on the “come” command. Mango was also subconsciously being trained not to travel too far away from us when he’s not on leash. Finally, Diane showed us how to train Mango for the “down” command.
After hurrying home to feed Mango his late lunch, we went to Pho Cyclo to meet up with Erich and his friend (damn it, i can’t remember her name!). They were very interested in checking out Mango so they followed us home. I gave my set of house keys to Smelly so that she could open the door for them while i take Mango out of his crate to pee. After playing with Mango for most of the afternoon, they left. Since i was pretty much out of TP - the last remaining roll of TP was about 80 percent used - Smelly and i went to the nearby Target to restock our TP supply. We spent no more than 10 minutes in Target as we wanted to hurry home to feed Mango.
Mango taking his afternoon nap.
On arrival home as i was getting out of the car, i reached into my pocket for my set of house keys. I then remembered that i had given my keys to Smelly. I was praying that my keys would be in her possession but i knew that Smelly does not normally carry any keys. Unfortunately, i was right. None of us had any house keys and we were officially locked out of the house! After calling one of my neighbors. who told me that the Primus lock on our door is almost impossible to be picked and that the only way to open the door would be for a locksmith to destroy it by drilling through the lock, i checked on my nearer neighbors to see if they have any other ideas.
Apparently, my nearer neighbor had this happened to her before. She gave me the contact number for the emergency locksmith service. The locksmith is supposed to have a master key for all our locks. I only managed to leave a message for the on call locksmith. While waiting for the on call locksmith to return my call, i was frantically trying to contact all the nearby locksmiths. I only managed to get hold of one of them and i was told that he would have to destroy the lock but the problem was that he did not have a replacement lock with him.
Finally, the on call locksmith returned my call. He told me that he lived in Marysville and that he would not be able to get to my place until at least 2130, more than 3 hours later. Smelly and i decided we could not wait that long since we are not supposed to leave Mango in his crate during the day for more than two hours and Mango was placed in his crate more than two hours ago. We then attempted to break the double-pane glass window on the door but those glass were freaking hard. After whacking on it a few times with a tire bolt wrench, there was nary a scratch on the damn thing.
I then crawled over the 7-ft fence and jumped into my backyard. On inspecting one of the side windows, i realized that it was actually opened! But that window is on the second floor of my house and it is probably about 15-ft from the ground. After a quick call to my friendly neighbor, i got myself a ladder and a box cutter. I extended the foldable ladder to its full length and leaned it against the side of the house. After climbing up the ladder, i cut open the screen and squeezed myself through the window. I was in! You cannot imagine my relief the moment i stepped into my bedroom from the window. One of the first things that we did after opening the door was to let Mango out of his crate. He probably was not aware of the things that we had to go through just to get him out of his crate!
Window with screen cut open.
Yesterday was not the first time that i had locked myself out of my house. The other time was probably three years ago. But it was the first time that both sets of keys were left in the house! This will not happen again.