August, a Scottish Terrier is only 18 months old, weighs 27 pounds and is a dog with a mind of his own. He loves chewing on shoes, papers of all kinds and books. So much so that his owner Susan Terjeson joked to her Facebook friends that she was considering getting him his own library card.
Susan Terjeson got her Scottish Terrier August from a breeder in Sammamish just 18 months ago and he came by that name because as Terjeson explained, " When I was a kid we lived on a farm in Iowa and down the road was a farmer named August Huey and in the spring when his mother sheep would have lambs sometimes they would not take care of their offspring and sometimes he would bring us the little lambs and we would raise them. So, I have that memory as a kid and I always sort of liked the name August."
She describes him as stubborn, independent, and a dog with a mind of his own. August gets Duck and Potato kibble and he gets peanut butter or chicken treats from Mud Bay.
While he's had obedience training Terjeson said, "He's not as trainable as our first Scotty was but he's got the basics and he's still kind of a puppy so I'm cutting him some slack. Part of the training is me too. It's not just all him. They say it's really the owner that's being trained, not the dog."
August likes to "tear things up," Terjeson said and added, "in the first year my husband lost seven or eight pairs of shoes. He kept leaving the closet door open and August would go in and get his shoes. Every day I'd come home there would be one pair out in the living room that he had chewed up. (...) finally we put a little doggie gate on the closet door so he can't get in."
Shredding paper is another preferred pastime "If you leave newspaper or mail somewhere he can get it he will rip it up. I came home one day and one of our Scientific Americans was completely shredded out in the back yard. Then another day he got something else, a book. It was ripped to shreds but it was just a paperback that he found. So I took a picture of it and put it on Facebook with the note ' I gotta get this boy his own library card,' and everybody said, 'Get him a Kindle."
August has a sister who is a show dog, but is brindle in color. He's all black except for a small white spot on his tail. "I ran into a woman a couple of weeks ago down at Starbucks who raised Scotties and has one now and she said that white spot she was told years ago is that it means royalty. I think it means that out of his litter two were brindle and he just got that little spot."
His friends are a golden lab Ellie who is, "a grumpy old lady and he loves her and she barely tolerates him. He's all over her all the time and I feel bad for her because I know he's really annoying to her."
August loves any dogs that he sees and with people he "loves to be held and he will just lay there and put his head on your shoulder."
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