Peachy's Pet Pals: Look Who's Back! Murphy Boyle is Now Almost a Teenager and Graduates From Dog Obedience School Although He Aspires to Boston College!
Murphy Boyle has a massive cult following on Whom You Know thanks to our readers with great taste and thanks to Boston College, who retweeted his puppy feature:
He has proven to be a very curious dog indeed. We met Murphy because his mom is our friend. She is a graduate of BC like Peachy, and also was on the same study abroad program at University College Cork (Murphy has high hopes from a retweet from you too over in Ireland please!). No one is surprised at Murphy's genetically competitive Irishness, or the descent of his name.
Murphy is grateful for the attention and sends you his love, and he even wore a BC leash to his graduation to dog school (see top picture). He is content with this diploma until there is a canine admission program at that top school in Chestnut Hill (you know the university that is the MOST Irish and the MOST Catholic-although we are being kinder to our Holy War rival Notre Dame since we met the truly awesome in every way Regis (read his book!) and were impressed with the class shown by Michael Garofola on The Bachelorette).
Murphy has been a busy little pup the past month and a half – taking his first camping trip, going to the dog park (with a creek!)
for the first time, taking laps around a swimming pool and graduating from puppy school, among other things! He’s now almost 4 months old, and a whopping 34 lbs, and is rapidly turning into a puppy version of a teenager… incredibly sweet when he’s tired
or just in sweet, mellow, loving mood, yet feisty, full of energy and testing boundaries at other times. He’s in the process of losing his puppy-pirhana teeth (thank goodness!) and growing in his much-duller big dog teeth.
In keeping with the strong BC academic tradition espoused by his human mom, Murphy graduated top of his class at puppy school. We’re not sure whether that’s a testament to his skills or to the fact that the 3 other puppies dropped out over the course of the 6-week series of classes. We’re going with the story that the other puppies were so intimidated by Murphy’s skills that they took leave to work on theirs before returning to another class.
Since our last update, he has mastered the art of jumping on the sofa. And chairs. And anything else that crosses his path! When he has his bouts of energy, he runs laps through the living room, bouncing from the couch, to the wing-back chair, to the floor, over to the front door, pausing for some water or a toy before circling around again. His mom is waiting for him to go crashing through the glass top of her coffee table at some point when he decides it looks like a good spring-board!
Murphy is a champion at the “sit” – and even the “stay” – command. But this is something he was doing even as a young 2-month-old when he came to his new home, so we are not sure we can credit his mom or his obedience classes with that one. Likewise, he does pretty well with “come”, but what Labrador puppy doesn’t want to run to greet his owner… or anyone else that wants to give him attention, for that matter. Some of the other skills he’s working on include down, leave it, and the recently-acquired “shake”. He’s a pretty smart pup, so can pick up on things fairly easily, but that means he also is intelligent enough to test the boundaries if we’re not consistent with him… like we said – the teenager is setting in!
True to form, he loves people (especially children), other dogs and WATER!!! The doggie-paddling came naturally, as it should with a Lab. Murphy, however, likes to add his own twist – biting at the water that splashes up in front of him when he’s paddling about.
His human mom is marveling at watching him grow up – shocked sometimes at how much he looks like a BIG DOG, and relishing the times when he still looks like a sweet, snuggly puppy.
Aunt Peachy will keep you apprised of Murphy's fantastic life! Stay tuned and thanks for your interest. Murphy has been given a new review assignment so look forward to that!
