A poster on a forum I frequent is on the search for a dog. One of the things she said she didn’t want was a needy dog, the kind that always has to be right there with you. Guess she wouldn’t want Chester.

Today I decided that it was time to test Chester out in the house on his own. We’d come back from the farmer’s market, and he was an unloaded puppy. I told him to stay (knowing full well he wouldn’t), and then we went out the back door — so unfortunately he knew we were out there. I only wanted to leave him for about 10 minutes or so.

As we went out, my husband said wouldn’t it be funny if he came out into the cat’s kennel? Yup, you guessed it, within 2 minutes he was out there. That is the very first time in 5 months that he’s gone through their cat door, even though he uses a doggy door at the place where we board him.

I don’t think normally he would have gone out there on his own. He has to great a need to be near us, and frankly, he likes being an inside dog. Sure enough, as soon as I came back he, so did he, although because it’s a jump up, it’s harder — but he did it.

It will be interesting to see if he continues to go out there. I suspect he might occasionally if bored, but I don’t think he’ll want to very often. He just needs to be with us. We’ve worked so hard on stay, and stay when I’m out of sight . . . he does okay when he knows we’re training, but if I tell him to stay somewhere in the house and then go to do a few things, in a minute or so he’s at my side.

Unless, of course, I want him in eyesight. Then he seems to deliberately stay out of sight.

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