A few observations.
Rockwell and I were on our extra-long walk this morning (it’s about 45 minutes) and I was thinking, what brief advice might I give someone who was going to raise a puppy as I am? As I was trying to haul him away from some bit of interesting garbage, I couldn’t think of any one piece of advice that would work with all puppies - such as “haul this way” or “haul that way”. I think you have to observe each dog for the individual it is and work with his personality. And some days he is better than other days. Just like people.

I was also thinking about how I have explained to people that Rockwell is going to live a restricted life so they should not feel sorry for him that he cannot chase tennis balls or get table scraps or go swimming. He has to get used to his future restrictions. That’s when it hit me - he will have far more liberties than pet dogs! He already gets to go places no pet dogs get to go. And he will be given more and better attention than most pet dogs. We passed some pet dogs who were out in their fenced yards without human company and I thought, Rockwell will always have human company. Whether he likes it or not. :)

Thirdly, I have been wondering why this pulled muscle (or whatever it is) on my left deltoid still hurts after a year and (I can be slow at times) it occurred to me that I have a dog pulling on my left side every single day! Maybe next year it will heal.