My Early Days

When I was born, Linda the breeder called Mom and said she had a puppy for me! Linda wanted a liver-colored male to keep, and I would stay with Mom at her house and Linda could take me to shows. Mom already had Grandpa Joey, Cousin Nathan, and his cousin Emmy at her house, but she loves puppies so a baby was OK with her. I needed a friend when I got there at 8 weeks old, so cousin Emmy took care of me at first. Grandpa slept a lot and cousin Nathan just stayed out of my way, so they weren’t much fun. All of them would get up on the couch to get away from my nipping and playing, and that was frustrating ‘til I figured out how to climb up the afghan on the couch and get to those old codgers! I found out climbing got me lots of places. I climbed up chairs, couches, out of pens, baby gates, you name it. I was the first baby out of the box after I was born, and running with the adults before anyone knew it. I wanted to be a big dog!
Uncle Dennis used to have some old stinky hiking boots in the floor, and I discovered how much fun it was to stick my head in there and breathe deeply. Oh it smelled so good! So good I’d get my head out and run around in circles and then go stick my head back in the boot. Mom and Dennis would laugh like crazy. They just didn’t appreciate how good those old boots smelled! Shoe funk! Life was good. If I got tired I just flopped down on the floor and slept, and then got up to run again. If they picked me up I’d wiggle ‘til they put me down. C’mon, I was busy! I remember they would pick me up when I was sleepy and take pictures. That flash kept waking me up!
Somehow I learned how to jump and jump well. I would dive-bomb old Nathan and land on his back from the couch, and bounce off him and hit the floor. I could leap from the couch to the recliner 5 feet away without hitting the ground. We’d go on trips and I’d bounce from bed to bed without hitting the floor. I learned to jump out of 4 foot exercise pens if I wanted to. I’d run and leap up to the couch, hit the back of it, and jump back off like I was doing flyball or something. I don’t even know what flyball is. They had to move the flower pots away from the back deck railing so I wouldn’t jump up to the railing and fly off into the yard. I did that a time or two!
I was lucky I didn’t break anything as a baby. Cousin Nathan broke a leg as a puppy jumping off a curb into a street and landing wrong, but I wasn’t so unfortunate. Mom says I was the craziest puppy she ever had, and she says Nathan was pretty crazy in his day. I jump bigger and better things now that I’m a big boy. I can jump the 5 foot fence out back, but then I get in big trouble with Mom. Most Bedlingtons can’t do that, I’m just a very athletic boy!