hyper-hopper

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can I help you

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We think Hopper was about 6 months old when we found him, judging by older pictures, so last year we retroactively set his birthday as exactly 6 months to the day we found him. Which is today!

Happy birthday Hopper!

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weird little man experiencing an Emotion of some kind

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strange little snow beast

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Hopper is really really prone to finding random things and playing with them for a bit and then eventually eating them, like bits of trash or pieces of toys etc. I've been teaching him that bringing them to me gets him a huge reward of a new chew or treat he really likes and it's actually worked super well so far, he'll usually play with something for a minute and then bring it to me and expect a reward. But we're not quite in the stage where he understands which things get him rewards.

So right now whenever he gets new chew or something he spends the next few hours coming up to me occasionally just to try placing it in my hand over and over and, I'm assuming, receiving infinite new chews. My boy is already trying to game the system

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This weird as hell stink face Hopper makes sometimes whenever i hold out treats he really likes will never not send me into fucking hysterics

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dude was NOT feeling festive

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???

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okay. thank you hopper

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So I might be a little stupid for realizing this late, but I think the trigger for his biting is actually when it's just too dark for him to see. I ruled out it being a startle response because he's usually awake when it happens but didn't even think about the fact that he might still be getting startled if he just can't see.

Sucks but at least I think I can predict it now, he'll just get crated as soon as the lights go out.

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I think I have to permanently ban Hopper from the bed at night now and I'm so heartbroken over it. He's such an incredibly cuddly dog and craves physical contact so much, he always races to the bed or couch whenever he thinks someone is about to lay down and immediately tucks himself up to my side -- but he's been losing his bite inhibition at night for a while now.

It's so confusing to me because it's not present during the day at all. He still tolerates any form of play or manhandling, even if he's dead asleep and has to be woken up and moved or something (which I do try to avoid). He's always loose and happy with his body language even then, I have literally never heard him growl outside of play until recently.

But at night anyone just shifting on the bed is enough to get him growling now, for the last few months. It's slowly gotten worse, and recently escalated to him biting gently at whatever moved closest to him. He was laying behind me earlier tonight and I reached around just to scratch my back and got a warning bite for it without even touching him. He ran off the bed since he seems to understand it's bad behaviour, but came back up about 15 minutes later to cuddle again. I was awake and on my phone at that point, and just spent a few minutes petting him with my other hand, just on the top of his head. He then bit my hand again suddenly, much harder, and left the bed again growling. I really hadn't expected it since that's usually a very common way we spend mornings, but I'm guessing I couldn't see something in his body language change suddenly with it being dark still.

I'm at such a loss at this point, I have no idea where the behavior came from or how to fix it, aside from just crating him every night from now on. He had a vet checkup recently and was fine. I Can only assume he maybe got smushed one of these nights or something by one of us rolling over, since he always tries to lay inbetween us, but I don't know what to do about it.

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First dye job ever was a maybe success? Though Hopper wasn't super excited about the 20min wait for it to set lmao

Bonus:

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this has become a series

I was taking a photo of the weird way hopper sits on the bed but then he started running at me in the middle of it

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I was taking a photo of the weird way hopper sits on the bed but then he started running at me in the middle of it

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ordered hopper a new harness and I know he's going to be so much comfier in something a bit better fit to his size but I'm also a little sad to lose the perfect color coordination all his gear had

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hello my friend can i get a 0.5 of the specialest beast in the world

HI BESTIE you absolutely can

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It's official, Hopper is surprisingly a purebred mini poodle!

Though, unfortunately, not a well bred one as kind of suspected. I'll bring it up with his vet and make sure we're doing as much preventative stuff as we can.

Hopper's test officially made it to the lab!

I've had some people guess at Hopper's breed mix in the past and thought it might be fun to make a poll while we wait for the test. For the sake of my sanity I'll say just vote for the two breeds you think will show up the highest in the results.