Sergio Xantoz von Bumi Mulya

Beagle Puppy
Our home was very quiet. Too quiet in my opinion. So we thought that one puppy in the house would bring a lot of hapiness and joy. However, selecting the right breed was not an easy task for us. Tutrie wanted a toy dog, but I wanted a guard dog....

Anyway, after several discussion (also with friends), we finally decided to adopt a beagle puppy directly from a breeder. Beagle is a medium size breed, and (according to literatures) very gentle to people and kids... However, it was hard to find a beagle breeder in Indonesia since this breed was not as popular as Golden Retriever or Rottweiler....

I found only one breeder that also responded to my email with cute picture, a pair of tri-color beagle (one month old) :


The beagle puppies were not ready to be taken, because they were too young. So we wait one month and then decided to visit the breeder. However the tri-color puppies were already sold. We saw only one tri-color female and one white-brown male puppy at the breeder. They are the same age, but the male is much larger, with large and strong bones. So we decided to take the male (the female already sold to someone anyway....)

Sergio Xantoz
The male name is Xantoz. Born in Bandung, January 2nd 2007. Above is the first picture of him taken on March 3rd 2007 when we took him home. His eyes looked sad because he was crying when we separated him from his siblings. He was stopped crying when Ndiet put him on her lap, exactly like a human baby :-P


We gave Xantoz a first name Sergio. The name came from Emyl's 7 years old daughter (Puti) who was 'hypnotized' at the Sergio Mendes performance at the Java Jazz festival in Jakarta a day before.

Sergio was very adorable puppy, but he always very active and love to bite anything. Sergio also could not stop eating even after his belly becoming round like a baloon that was going to explode anytime. Sergio always finishes his meal within seconds (I read a book about dog that a dog meal is in a proper size when the dog can finish it within half an hour, but I don't believe it after I saw Sergio eating). We were afraid if too much food could have him killed, so we decided to control (reduce) his food until his belly did not touch the floor when he walked....

Wet Towel
Sergio was too young to take a bath, so we only use wet towel. It sounds easy, however, experience proofs differently. Cleaning Sergio with wet towel was very hard effort. Sergio always struggle with full speed and power to bite the towel whenever it touched him...


Chewing Bone
One of Sergio's hobby was chewing bone (made from cow hide). Usually a small sized bone would last about 3 days before he ignored it because it became too small for him.


Playing with New Objects
Sergio always wants to explore something new, such as bird feather. Sergio will bark endlessly when the feather moves or flies blown by wind.


Always Running
It's very difficult to take Sergio's picture, because he always try to grab the camera. The picture below taken with telephoto, so I had time to click the shutter button before he's too near :)


Or we could took him from the side (also from distance), which he couldn't see the camera .... (look at his fine body shape after controlled meals)


Ignorant in a New Place
Or when we put him in a new place, so he could spend his time sniffing, and we could call his name and took the picture... Below is his first time we put him in our backyard, near the swimming pool.


He was also busy watching Lasiman (our housekeeper) removing dead leaves from the swimming pool.


Afraid of Height
Below when he walked inside the house... Our house is multi level, apparently one ladder step (less than 20cm) is too high for him, even a dog biscuit could not attrack him to jump... May be because below the step was on top of a koi fish pond (under construction), with a 1.5m depth.


Time for a Shower
First time Sergio took a shower, Sergio cried for mercy as if being butchered. Sergio would tried by any means to escape. However, Pak Agus, a merciless professional dog washer/cleaner (I don't know the correct terminology in English), managed to keep Sergio from running away.


Drying
Just like in a beauty saloon, hair dryer would be finishing touch. Pak Agus gave Sergio something to chew (looks like nail cutter to me) since Sergio tried to bite the hair dryer...


Happy Face Again
Well, the shower ritual has finished. Now Sergio is clean as new :) (and ready to play in the dirt again if we didn't put 'firewall' in every opening between stone floor and the dirt world....


Well, that's all I have for my first blog today :)... Beagle is rare and not very popular in Indonesia, so I would be very interested to know if there is a beagle owner who owns female beagle with different great-great-grand-parents :)