Savage will be 6 and a half months old tomorrow. I weighed him last week and he was 88lbs and 28 and a half inches high at the shoulder. It's getting hard to weigh him on our home scale because I can't pick him up so easily, and both R. and him together max out the scale!
We went out fishing for the Minnesota opener last weekend and took the puppy with. It was sprinkling when we left and raining quite a lot by the time we packed up and went home, so Savage didn't have the most wonderful time. He got soaked and in about an hour was shivering and miserable. R. put a life-jacket on him to keep in some of his body heat, but the life-jacket bothered him because he couldn't lay down comfortably in it.The cool part came when baby dog decided to help us out by leaning over the side of the boat, pulling up the stringer and methodically putting all the fish back in the boat. Every time we took a trout off the line he started licking it, which was cute. And he got a couple of fresh fillets when we got home. He handled being in the boat (our 12' boat, the smallest one) very well except for not liking the rain, and as expected, he ended up really getting in the way since he prefers being practically on top of his owners at all times. But all in all, it was a learning experience and semi-successful. I think I may need to buy him something waterproof to wear so he doesn't get so chilled.
Every day he gets more comfortable with the lake, fetching sticks from deeper water and splashing around. He is fine with walking out on the docks, though I know many puppies who aren't because the floating docks move around under their feet and make them nervous. Yesterday he was playing with some dogs along the shore and fell down and got completely covered in mud. I really wanted to wash him off before putting him in the new truck so a friend and I tried to rinse him with a garden hose. He has never met a garden hose, and it was fine as long as he was playing, attacking the stream with his mouth, but as soon as I held him to clean him off, he freaked and ran off a few yards. I figure we'll do the whole garden hose bath experience later with warmer water and a more sedate puppy. The truck's going to end up being a mess anyway. Dammit.