Day 26 - Dairy Queen and Ben Bikin' Park

Due to back-to-back meetings starting at noon, I only stayed at work until 11:00 today, so Jedi had a "short" day in the crate. Because of the noon meeting, though, I only had 15 minutes between getting home and needing to be on the call, so that meant a super quick lunch training session today. I filled up his food dish and we went outside where we worked on our wait skills, did "bottom" on all three contacts, and ate next to the moving teeter again.

After work I couldn't put it off any longer, I had to mow. I always pile the agility equipment in the center of the yard to keep it out of the way while I mow, then move it back to the edges and mow the last bit to finish. I swear Jedi didn't even blink when I picked up the teeter to move it -- either time. This makes me wonder if the spooky part is actually the fact that it makes dogs go up and down? It completely baffled me when he just sat and watched me move it both times and didn't look the least bit bothered.

Jedi is doing better with the lawn mower. He didn't spend the whole time running away from it, but instead found his safe place under the agility table. The mower got within feet of him hiding under there, but it would seem that if he's under the table he feels secure. Too bad that probably won't last too much longer. This was only the second time he's seen the mower, so I'm sure he will continue to improve. I prefer this reaction to chasing and biting at the mower.

I only mowed the back yard and I finished that up around 5:30 -- so technically we had time to do a more involved outing. Ultimately, though, I decided to dial it in with a completely self-serving trip to Dairy Queen, after which we went to Ben Bikin' park here in Sparta to enjoy our treats.

Luke got to come with because I figure he deserves outings like this. I got a blizzard for myself and two small cones in a cup for the dogs. We found a nice spot in the grass next to the river and Jedi got introduced to the wonders of ice cream. I think it was a hit.

I'm not sure the wisdom of loading a puppy with sugar right around the time of day he tends to go absolutely bonkers, but he sure enjoyed it. For his first time having ice cream, he was pretty delicate with it. Luke is pretty much the opposite -- he pulled the cone out of the dish, ate the ice cream out of the dish, then ate the cone. I gave him the cone part out of Jedi's dish because Jedi didn't need that much ice cream, so then Luke scarfed that down while Jedi continued to work on cleaning out his dish.

This park is more of a "parklet" and is pretty small, so there wasn't much to explore. We took the obligatory photo next to the big Ben Bikin' statue, but it's so big that I'd have to get like 200' away to show it. Notice, though, how much improvement has been made with Jedi's stay! I had worked it again with his dinner (along with beep-beep, bottom, & more teeter movement) and it looks like it's starting to pay off already. I also had Jedi pose next to the super creepy statue dude -- that one was kind of cheating because it was raised up off the ground, so he was kind of stuck there.

After that we just wandered around a bit more, with Jedi playing a crazy game of tug with the long line. We got home about a half hour ago and he's already crashed. It's an assisted crash, as he's been placed in the play pen. Evenings are pretty much the only time the play pen gets used these days -- it's because of the nighttime bonkers that he gets. After being such a good puppy all day, Jedi pretty much goes nuts around 8:00 and I'm quite sure it's like he's an overtired toddler in need of a nap. This theory is proven by the fact that he typically completely crashes within 5-10 minutes of going into the pen. Ah, peace and quiet....