Guinness is 9 months old!!

It's hard to believe that our little Guinness is 9 months old already.  He's developing SUCH a personality, and it's a really fun personality too!  He's full of energy ALWAYS, and he's a happy boy ALWAYS.  Some days he's a lot for me to handle on our walks just because he's so excited by people and dogs and he is super strong now, but most days he does great on our walks!  I've learned to avoid walks with Guinness during peak times (like 5-6:30pm), and then that makes things a lot easier on me.

We just discovered yesterday that he definitely knows the word "ball" now!  I'd had my suspicions before, but it was confirmed yesterday.  If we say, "Where's your ball?" then he looks around the apartment until he finds his favorite green ball.  He'd done that a few times for me before, but I thought it could have just been a lucky coincidence and I wasn't SURE that he knew it, but yesterday McGee and I tried it a few different times and it's definite.  He's such a smart boy!!  McGee and I are very proud, even though we didn't really have anything to do with it.

Another funny thing we learned about Guinness is that he is terrified of the heater!  Like shaking, whimpering, hiding behind me terrified.  It's so sad to see.. BUT, on this one he's going to have to just toughen up, because I plan to use the heater a LOT this winter.  Hopefully with some time he'll get used to it... Here's a picture of him from last week after he finally passed out after hours of being stressed out by the heater:

We don't really have any new stats on him, but we should find out his weight in December.  I'm thinking an easy 60 pounds by then!  He's looking more and more like a German Shepherd, but we do see bits of  his Blue Heeler side.  Especially when we look at this picture of a Blue Heeler: 

He has a white little line down the middle of his forehead from the patch of white that is on the head of every Blue Heeler I've seen, and his paws are just like a Blue Heeler, and that sure is his open-mouthed smile!!  The eyes look a lot like his eyes too.  

Speaking of smiling, Guinness still does his big cheesy toothy smile when he's super happy!!  It is the CUTEST thing, and it makes us so happy when he does it.  Unfortunately, I still haven't been able to capture a picture of it because he's always moving around too much and wagging his whole body (so pictures are just a big blur), but I found better pictures online of what he looks like.  Just combine the smiles from these two pictures, and imagine it on the cute little face of Guinness.  

That's it for the update on Guinness!  We're leaving for Hawaii in a few days!!  I'm so excited!!!!!  I'll do a new post after we return from that.