Changes through the year

In the past year, Loki has gone through a number of changes - changes in his appearance, changes in his personality, changes in his tastes, and changes in his behavior.

Besides the obvious changing of size, a couple things were unexpected for us as first time puppy owners. Loki's fur went through many changes. When he was about 4 months old, he started to lose his puppy fur. I thought he had some skin disease! I even thought about bringing him to the vet. His fur looked absolutely terrible. I think puppy fur is all undercoat hair. When his adult hair came in, he started to look better. I was surprised by how "waterproof" his adult outer coat was. Drops of water would just roll off his back.

Also his butt hair has gone through various changes. Through most of the first year, his butt hair was long and looked funny. Yun always thought we should go get that part of him groomed. In the past couple months, Loki's butt hair now looks so much better. Who knew? He must have shed off those long weird looking tufts of fur. Now he has a cute butt =)

Then through maybe 6 months to a year, his body and head were a bit awkward and out of proportion, just like human teenagers. I think that even now, his body shape is still changing a bit. I hope he fills out a little more.

Loki's personality seemed to change daily. Actually, his personality is still changing. Some days he is good. Some days he is bad. Most days he is independent, non-cuddly, and standoff-ish. While most dog owners think that is weird for a dog, we love the fact that Loki is independent.

More recently, he's really loving belly rubs. He wasn't like that as a puppy at all. As a puppy, he didn't really like to be on his back. But these days, he can't seem to get enough of belly rubs. He twitches his hind legs in such a cute way! He now happily gets multiple belly rubs each day. What a lucky dog! We can't refuse, because he's so cute.

As a puppy he only occasionally did the Shiba 500. Maybe only a few times a month. But recently, he's taken to doing it almost daily, right after his walk. You'd think that he'd be tired right after his hour long walk, but as soon as I get his leash off, he starts his Shiba 500 around the apartment.

I remember when he was around 3 -6 months old, he didn't care too much about birds & chasing other creatures. I thought that was weird, because I always read that Shibas has a high prey drive. Apparently, I just had to wait until he grew up. Now he'll chase at nearly everything - birds, cats, leaves, cars, and other dogs.

His tastes have also changed through the year. We bought Bil-Jac Liver Treats for him when he was only 3 months old. He completely ignored it and didn't care for it at all. I figured that I shouldn't bother buying those anymore. But then a few months later, we were given those same treats during his obedience class. And he absolutely loved them!

I wonder what changes are in store for us in the next year.