As long as I remain aware that this is not Scruff V2 but Chunk V1 and let him be who he is, it will be fine. It is so easy to expect that a new dog will come in and do exactly what the old dog did with the same verbal commands while forgetting that the old dog took a lot of time and training to learn that.

I was having lunch with my best friend 2 years after I got Scruff. I was telling her how amazing it is that Scruff is becoming exactly what Twiggy was. She knew the same words, did the same things.... I went on and on. Finally she said "Are you done?" and I said "Huh?" Then she said "YOU trained both dogs! YOU trained them the same way. With the same voice inflections, the same vocabulary... of COURSE she is becoming Twiggy! It can't happen any other way with the same trainer." And I just said "Oh. Yeah."

We'll ramp training up when he is out of the cone of shame and has his first vet visit out of the way. Those sutures only happened Thursday so he still wants to lick at them. My vet will do e-rays of the hips because of the lab in him to make sure there is no early sign of dysplasia along with the usual 1st tune up stuff.