Day 28 - Brotherly Love!

Today was the big day -- Jedi would get to see his brother, Pyro! And I tell you, were it not for knowing that they would be at the trial today there is a good chance I would have turned the alarm off, rolled over, and gone back to sleep. I didn't sleep well last night, mostly thanks to the house getting up to 82 degrees yesterday. (Yeah, I'm too cheap to run my air conditioning.) Thankfully today was way cooler (70 degrees), which meant that the dogs could easily crate out of the van. The trial was teeny-tiny and it probably would have been a good opportunity to give Jedi the experience of crating inside, but that day will come soon enough and I'm too lazy to drag crates around when I don't have to.

Our morning schedule was pretty much identical to last Saturday. The alarm went off at 4:30 and I dutifully got up and fed Jedi his breakfast with the usual training session, then gave him his "second breakfast" in the crate while I got dressed. I packed the FitBone, a small target, and a food dish for his lunch training session, figuring that we'd once again do it at the trial before coming home.

We got on the road by 5:30 and the trip over went very well. I had a bully stick in Jedi's crate this time and that kept him busy for a while. He chewed on the water dish once, probably to voice his displeasure at it being empty. That crate has a tiny little dish in it, I should probably go ahead and get a bigger one if he's going to continue to drink 5 gallons of water a day.

We got to the trial at 7:30 and after walking the course Jedi had a couple of minutes to get to say hello to Pyro before I had to run Secret. After Secret's run I took Jedi inside for a while so that he could get some time in around all of the trial noise. He did super today and was totally focused on his toys. We didn't get a chance to "watch" any agility, but I don't know if that's necessarily something I want him practicing anyhow. There was a lot of barking while I had him in there and it didn't bother him at all.

I got to spend some one-on-one time with Pyro later on when Jedi was in the van. I just love the little guy. He and Jedi have a lot in common and share a lot of the same mannerisms. It will be so fun to watch them both grow up.

I had another chunk of time after Secret ran Standard, so we took the boys out to the big fenced-in area in the back. One other dog was back there at the time and all three of them got along really well. Both of the boys have a pretty mild play style (at least at this point in time) so things didn't get too rough and tumble, but they really seemed to enjoy their time together.

After we were all done running agility for the day we took all of the dogs to the big field again. I kept Secret occupied with her frisbee, but Kizzy & Kaiser both got to meet and play with Pyro. It was quite the fun little crew. Everyone got in lots of running and was good and pooped by the end.

The trial was small and got done super early, so even after all of this it was only about 11:30. I had debated just doing Jedi's lunch session when we got home, but I figured it would be good to get the experience of training in a different setting. He did super well, but did get distracted when a gentleman walked by, and then again when the gentleman (with warning) released a horde of poodles from his RV. Jedi was able to refocus back on me during all of that, though, so that's a win.

I had a minor meltdown on the way home when it appeared that my phone had eaten all of the pictures and video that I took today. As you can see by the fact that there are pictures in this blog post, thankfully I was able to recover them. I would have been the saddest person ever if I had no memories from the brother's meet-up today. Thankfully that's not the case, though, and now I have this video to look back on, too!

Jedi rode home in the big crate and I had Kizzy ride in the little crate up front so that everyone could have their pig ear in peace (not sure why I bothered, as both Kizzy and Jedi were too tired to even eat theirs today). I topped off his water dish before we left and whether it was that, the bigger crate, or a combo of the two, the ride home was much better than last time and he pretty much didn't make a peep.

Since we got home, Jedi has been going pretty much a million miles per hour nonstop. He continues to go in and out the dog door without prompting and seems to be using it to let himself out to potty now. I finally had to make Secret come inside a bit ago because she has decided that Jedi is her own personal plaything, and since I lock all of her toys in the garage then she will use him instead. It's nonstop bitey-face, wrestling, and running laps. Kizzy is screaming and wooing less, so she must be getting used to it (or she was just too tired to care). Jedi did move on to Kizzy after I made Secret come in the house -- and apparently swimming was on the agenda at that point. He does love those pools...

Jedi figured out how to jump onto the window seat to be able to look out the front window today. It took quite a bit of effort but he was pretty determined to get it done. I imagine soon enough I'll get an opportunity to take a picture of FIVE dogs in the window now.

Dinner training was Jedi's introduction to the agility table. It's always been out there, he always goes under it, and he's been on top of it plenty of times as well. I sat next to it and first clicked him for just getting on it. After that was solid I held off to see what it would take to shape the down -- and, well, it was the first thing he offered, so that was easy enough. We did several more reps of that and he seemed to have figured it out easily enough. I spent the rest of his dinner on the teeter. I still don't really get his attitude around this object. Today he ran right over to it and was so eager to play that he started to run up the plank -- I dove in to hold it down with my foot before he got up to the tipping point and got him redirected in the correct direction. After a couple of bottoms I let him finish up his dinner while I moved the teeter around.

Day 27 - Lake Neshonoc/Park

Today was a day filled with accomplishments for Jedi. During our breakfast training session he finally did his first full pivots to the right! I have to admit that I haven't been working on pivots as much as I probably should because I don't find them as "fun" as some of the other stuff and he was getting frustrated as I pushed him to go in the other direction. I was thrilled to finally see progress on this behavior this morning. Granted, for as long as it took to get the pivot left, this is pretty much right on schedule.

The second accomplishment is that Jedi seems to have figured out how to get on the couch by himself. He has managed to get himself up there almost by accident a few times when he was running around like a loon, but today he was able to heft himself up there on several occasions. He still needs a bit of a run at it -- or, if Luke obliges, Jedi just climbs on top of him on the way up.

The last big thing is that he's now went in and out of the dog door several times without assistance or encouragement! We'd moved on to him being able to move the flap on his own, but he was only going through if I was on the other side calling him through. Today I closed the big door to try to keep the house cooler, so he didn't have the easy option of going out that way. He finally found the motivation to go through on his own! Big breakthrough!!

Of course, these things all came together at a most inopportune time, as today was also the day I put the pools back out in the yard. We were forecast to have our warmest day so far (we hit 90), so I figured the dogs might enjoy the chance to play in the water today. I filled them up a little after 10:00 and it was already pretty warm outside, so Jedi had fun playing in them right away. He also decided to go for a bit of a swim during one of the trips where he let himself outside in the afternoon, which I discovered when he came blasting through the dog door and up onto the couch, wet as can be.

Our lunch training session today was spent on nails and sitting nicely while the other dogs had their turns. Jedi was first to climb in my lap, so he got to go first. His preferred position isn't necessarily my preferred position, but he was quiet and good so I guess I'm the one who gets to adapt. He was patient and attentive while the other dogs had their turn, too, and kept out of the way. We finished up with some beep-beep in the yard, as we're trying to add a bit more distance.

Because it was 90 degrees outside, I figured today would be a good day to hit up one of our water options for the daily outing. I think it was technically Kizzy's turn, but swimming is Secret's wheelhouse so she got to go. I took them to the park at Lake Neshonoc with the plan to swim at the little beach and then explore the park while we dried off.

There was a small group of young people sunning themselves near the beach and they were beside themselves when I brought the dogs down. A few of them came down to meet Jedi, but he was a little distracted by toys and Secret running into the water. I had the baby bumper that I picked up during our trip to PetSmart -- it's definitely more size-appropriate for Jedi at the moment. I mostly did little throws in shallower water, but we did move into a couple of longer ones where he had to swim a bit. The water is still pretty cold, but he did really well today.

We hadn't been there terribly long when a couple of families arrived with about five or six little kids. There was much screaming and splashing -- Jedi kind of stared at them in wonderment for a bit, but then went back to playing. I was glad that they didn't seem to mind the dogs going between them, either. It was a great experience, since we never get around children enough.

We didn't stay and swim too terribly long since Secret has a trial tomorrow. We stopped back at the van to swap gear and then took off for a walk around the park. Jedi is definitely getting more confident about venturing further away from me, at least when the other dogs lead the way. The good news is that his recall is still doing really well.

We paused for some picture taking, where Secret pretty much didn't cooperate at all. I thought about going down to check out the boat docks, but the dogs were getting dry by that time and there were people fishing down there, so we can save that for another day. By the time we made it back to the van we'd had a nice 45-minute outing.

I had a few errands to run, but it was too hot for the dogs to sit in the van for any period of time. I make a quick stop at home and elected to just put Jedi in his play pen. Yeah.... I was gone for about 40 minutes and I'm sure you can guess where this is going. When I opened up the door, sure enough there were five dogs standing there waiting to greet me, including one boy border collie with his tail just a wagging. The good news is that nothing appears to have happened or been destroyed, and he went potty immediately upon going outside. Lesson learned, don't leave the puppy unattended in the puppy pen. It was still entirely intact, so he must have just gone over. He's jumped at the sides in front of me, but never come close to climbing over. Guess we know he can!

Secret's been hogging Jedi all night and has been playing with him, which irritates Kizzy to no end. One of these days I'll have to video the fit she throws. I finally had to put Jedi in the pen just to get all of that to stop. It's been a busy day for him, so he crashed immediately.

We'll have to get to bed soon, because tomorrow is another big day for Jedi -- he gets to see his brother, Pyro! I'm so excited, I hope they have fun playing together. I can't wait to see him. I'm taking cake to the trial tomorrow, too, to celebrate Secret's MACH that she picked up at this location last weekend. That was one of my errands tonight, to pick that up. I think it turned out great!

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....

Day 25 - Cashton Park

Jedi's left ear broke today. I've seen his siblings having all sorts of wonky ear days, but since he came home Jedi has been pretty consistently up with a slight tip at the ends. While my preference would be totally prick ears, I'm okay if they go tipped. It looks cute on him and I don't think it's worth the fuss to push from a natural tip into a prick (especially when you see people going through the effort to get that tipped look if that's their preference).

But floppy ears, well, I didn't really want those. No, this is not a big deal. It's not a hound ear. It will almost certainly go back up on its own. It does have me pondering, though, if I care enough to go through the bother of gluing. I've never done it before, so I can't say I have any experience with it. Just for giggles, I blew $10 tonight on a box of nasal strips just to see what would go into that method. I cleaned Jedi's ears with alcohol to prep them and then I just stuck a bare strip onto his ear to see what happened. First of all, his ears are tiny and the strip stuck up a bit, so the sizing doesn't seem ideal at this point. While it lifted the flop, I think it made the ear just look more like it used to -- With the one strip I didn't achieve a full-on prick ear. It might take more?

It doesn't much matter. In less than five minutes it was no longer in the ear and I have no earthly idea where it made off to. He didn't move further than 5' away from me the entire time, so I don't know how something like that up and disappears. But, well, I'd say this experiment went down as a bit of a failure. I think I'm just going to hope it goes back up on its own.  :o)  If I do opt to go the gluing route, at least I learned that I need to get actual (skin-safe) glue and probably a helper as well. He also has excessively fuzzy ears, so I wonder if that needs to come off? Who knows, it all seems a lot of bother, doesn't it?

Today was similar to yesterday in that I got home from work around 1:00. I did Jedi's lunch session outside, where we largely worked on his "bottom" skills on the bottom of the dog walk plank (may as well form the association early). All of the dogs were around and he got a bit frustrated with them butting in, but he was able to focus and stay on track this time. Everyone got to play with balls for a bit after that, which helped with afternoon nap time.

Our outing of the day was to Cashton Park. It's a pretty good-sized park that houses a couple of ball fields, a football field, some buildings, playground equipment, and we even found a frisbee golf course set back into a wooded area. We didn't see anyone until right before we left, so I just let the dogs explore and sniff around off leash. We stopped for the obligatory pose on the playground equipment. The dogs got to chase frisbee rollers in the football field, but it was so windy that even rollers weren't really behaving -- and Secret started to think it was more important to eat the goose poop in the grass. Jedi thought it was fun at least, and probably wishes we would have played longer.

We continued around the perimeter to explore the bleachers area, and made our way through the shelter and found the lion fountain, which warranted more posing. Maybe someday soon Jedi's stay will be good enough that I can move far enough away to get stuff into the picture frame (we did work on that at lunch today!). Then we just kept making our way around the edge of the park, which is when we found the frisbee golf area.

We also made sure to explore things that move. Jedi did a touch on a swing for me and wasn't bothered by it at all. Then we made our way to the merry go round and he hopped right on there as well. His weight didn't really make it move, but Secret did. I couldn't get her to go back on it with all four feet once she realized this, but Jedi wasn't bothered by the movement at all.

When we got home I worked the other dogs on their contacts and had Jedi stay outside with us (one dog at a time). The only real thing he has ever shown any fear towards is my teeter. It's a PVC base and it squeaks something terrible when the dogs go over it, so I don't know if it's the noise, the dogs moving, the board moving -- who knows. At any rate, I figured I'd let him watch wherever he felt comfortable and throw him hotdogs if he got close enough. Basically he hung out over by the table/gate area or up on the deck any time we were by the teeter, but then would come darting out into the yard when we made our way around to the dog walk.

After all three dogs had their turns it was time for dinner. I decided to take Jedi's dinner outside and spend it all on the teeter. I fed him all the way over to the teeter to keep him with me (he's leery if he thinks that's where we're going) and we were able to get right up next to the teeter. Then he started to offer bottom on the teeter plank, so we went with that! The other dogs were finishing up their dinner and coming out by this point, so I had to keep shooing them off to make sure they didn't go all the way over and freak him out again. We progressed to me lifting the bottom of the teeter off the ground a few inches and moving it around as he ate out of my hand. This is probably something we should do a lot more of until he's okay being around it when the other dogs go over. Because, you know, some day he's going to have to go over it himself!

Tonight I officially removed the water dish indoors. Thankfully it no longer freezes outside so the dogs have it out there, but Jedi has gotten into the habit of playing in and dumping the dish in the house. So yup, gone. Sorry dogs, maybe it can come back some day (hopefully by winter, right?).

Day 24 - Downtown West Salem (Leonard Street)

As expected, Jedi slept pretty well last night after his busy, busy day. He didn't stir at all until the alarm went off this morning at 6:30. This was an office morning for me, so he didn't get a ton of time to run around and play before I left this morning -- but judging by the fact that he was sleeping again when I got out of the shower I assume he had a lot of sleeping to catch up on and that he would be fine being left today. He made the most of his free time this morning, though, and got in lots of play time with Kizzy.

It was a long half-day today, as I had a noon meeting that I had to stick around for. Thankfully it got out a little early and I ended up getting home just after 1:00. It was apparently nap time for all of the dogs because nobody saw or heard me pull into the garage. It's always entertaining to get the surprise woo's and barks when I open the door, as they are caught slacking on their guard dog duties. Jedi did fine with his 5.5 hours in the crate. I love that he's learning to associate the crate with awesome stuff already. He dives into the crate in the bedroom because that's where he gets his "second breakfast" of canned food and yogurt while I get ready in the morning, and he also gets a treat for going in there at night. When I leave to go to work everyone gets Kongs filled with tasty stuff and Jedi sure seems to have figured out that routine already as well. I feel better leaving him knowing that he doesn't mind hanging out in the crate.

I was able to do our lunch training session outside today. I let Kizzy stay out as the distraction, and she was good at helping to clean up the food that didn't make it into Jedi's mouth (and slightly naughty about trying to steal it directly out of the bowl at times). We went through several of the things we've been working on and then I again tried to introduce the single stick-in-the-ground weave pole that I'd tried to get him to interact with yesterday (for the purpose of turning around an object). While we didn't get anything remotely close to a turn around the pole today, Jedi did offer a lot of interaction that he was rewarded for -- his favorite continues to be the pee trick, which is pretty cute next to the pole, really. He also wrapped his arms around it several times, which could come in handy for future holding tricks.

During our post-training play session, Jedi totally nailed me while going for his frisbee. It's my own fault, as I was the one waving it around in the air in front of him. He went for it, missed, and sunk a tooth into my forearm. It didn't bleed too much, but left a nice little hole. It will probably make a pretty bruise in a day or so. Can you believe I made it 3+ weeks without any puppy war wounds?

For our outing of the day I packed up Jedi, along with Kaiser, and we went to West Salem. I parked in the little lot by the bike trail right at the edge of downtown, with the goal of exposing him to a new downtown area. Downtown West Salem isn't very big, so we actually ended up walking the entire length of Leonard Street from one end to the other, then crossing the road and coming back down the other side. We left the van at 5:20 and returned just as the 6:00 whistle was sounding, so it ended up being a fairly nice little trek.

Jedi once again showed that he has absolutely no problem going to the bathroom on a short leash in public -- I guess this is a good thing, since my other dogs seem to have issues with this quite often when we travel. He seems to be pattern-training to go at the start of our walks, which is nice because we're usually near a garbage can!

Some guy came out of one of the shops (it was probably a bar) and shouted across the street at us, "Hey, are those husky puppies?" Umm.... Okay, I get that all the time when I have the Klee Kai out, that's normal. But I wouldn't have ever pegged Jedi as a husky puppy. That's a new one! Aside from that, the only real entertainment in the downtown area was the glass doors. Jedi was quite enamored with checking out his reflection in the glass (he also had to stop to admire himself on the side panels of a few cars). There was a fair amount of vehicle traffic, which included several farm vehicles, including a large tractor that drove right through downtown.

We didn't encounter too many people out and about, probably because it felt like a storm was blowing in (we got sprinkled on a few times). On the way back down Leonard Street we saw a woman walking a golden retriever on the other side of the street. Jedi got a little woofy and was interested in the dog, but he did redirect easily. Not that long after, I was paying attention to a woman with a small dog up the street on our side, and completely didn't see the stupid fat terrier mix that came barreling across the street at us with his hackles up (dog is lucky he didn't get schmucked). I'm incredibly thankful that I had Kaiser along tonight, as he is, with the exception of Luke, my most completely non-reactive dog. The off-leash dog focused entirely on Kaiser, who blessedly was very good about the entire situation. Jedi had a chance to sniff at the stranger dog, but, not knowing anything about the dog and considering that his hackles were still up, I elected to pick Jedi up at that point and then used my foot to shoo the dog away from Kaiser. Apparently Kaiser wasn't very exciting to him, as he then parted and decided to start peeing on everything instead.

That was pretty much our excitement for the night. We also had a girl on a bicycle go by (no reaction) and walked past a guy mowing the lawn on the other side of the street. Jedi played tug with his leash several times on the walk and tried to "walk" Kaiser a couple of times as well (which was not really appreciated). This is why I always laugh a little (mostly internal) when students ask me how to get their dog to stop playing with their leash on walks. I'm the one who buys and uses leashes specifically designed for the purpose of tugging/mouthing/playing.  :o)

Day 23 - First day of puppy class!

Jedi had a super full day today and he is one tuckered out puppy tonight. It's not often that we come home and he immediately crashes at my feet. Actually, I'm not sure that's ever happened! But that's where he is now, about 15 minutes after we got home from teaching class.

I worked from home all day today and Jedi had a really good day! It was chilly out this morning, but not so bad that I felt like I had to shut the screen door -- So Jedi had free access to the outdoors all day and he tends to do pretty well with this arrangement. Last night I think I heard him bat at the dog door. I don't think he had to go out because when I got up and took him out he pretty much just looked at me, but if he's expressing interest in what the dog door does (or allows him to do) then that's a good thing.

Normally Jedi runs full bore until about 8:30 or 9:00, but this morning he was down for the count at 8:00 (which is nice, because my email seems to explode on Monday mornings). My heart melted when I looked down and saw that Jedi had cuddled into Luke -- and Luke didn't move away! At one point Luke positively squished Jedi into the couch, but Jedi was happy as a clam with this arrangement. Everyone always loves Luke, and it's nice when Luke gives in and accepts it.

After a mid-morning flurry of puppy activity, Jedi crashed again around 11:30. I felt bad that I had to wake him up for his lunch training session, but we had a vet appointment at 1:00 and we needed to get everything done and out of the way before we had to leave. Someone was kind of cranky about this! I took our training session outside at lunch and had the other dogs there, but Jedi was not interested in competing with them (they were being obnoxious). Because of this I ended up putting the other dogs in the house, but he still just wasn't in a working mood. Oh the grumbling and barking he did in protest.... I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan of training outside, either, because he really sucks at finding food that falls in the grass.

At any rate, we were literally getting nowhere so eventually I packed it up and we went down into the basement. This seemed to wake him up a bit and he turned on and was back into his usual mode. Past experience has shown me that Jedi is not a fan of working in the heat -- and while I wouldn't call the mid-60s hot, we did finally have sun and it was a lot warmer outside than it has been. Still, though, I see more outdoor sessions in our future.

Our vet visit went well today. I once again had three dogs -- This time it was Luke, Kaiser, and Jedi. We got everyone weighed first and Jedi came in at 12.4 lbs today!! Wasn't he just 10.6 or something last Tuesday?! I thought Jedi was just getting another puppy booster today, but I guess he was on the roster for his first Lyme vaccine. He was a super good boy, playing in the exam room while we waited and then tugging to keep him out of the way for Luke's exam. He didn't seem to appreciate the shot at all, but was easily distracted with treats in his face. Unfortunately he's been a bit sensitive to touch since receiving the vaccination, so this is something I'll bring up with the vet when we go back in a couple of weeks to see what he says. It's nothing major, but he has whined a couple of times when picked up in ways that have never elicited a reaction before.

I thought he'd crash when we got home, but pretty much the opposite was true. Knowing we had class coming up tonight I finally put him in the x-pen at 3:00 for a bit of a forced nap, and he was able to sleep until I started moving around again at 4:45. Probably not quite enough, because he was one tired boy when we went to class tonight.

I got to class about a half hour early to get settled in and ready, and Jedi got to meet a nice young female lab that belongs to the other trainer. They did very well together until she started getting a little frisky, and I think he was just too tired to reciprocate and he did more hiding under me.

My puppies are a little older this session, with a couple in the 5-month range. The other two are 16/17 weeks, though, so there are a couple that are closer to Jedi's age. It's going to be fun teaching this class and talking about the stuff I'm doing with my own puppy. I gave them a bit of a background in what I'm doing with Jedi and why. They probably think I'm nuts. We started the class with playtime and everything went well. It seems like a nice group of pretty balanced puppies that should do well together. We have a little tripod Cavalier puppy that was a little timid and Jedi was really perfect for her tonight (we'll see if he's so subdued next week).

Jedi was the perfect class dog. He got to stay out the entire puppy class and demonstrated luring (oh the horror, I really haven't done much of this with him, lol) and walking on leash. The best news is that he made it all night without having any accidents inside! I got him outside between classes and he took care of everything, then made it until we left. Good boy!

Jedi stayed in his crate for the Advanced class and did very well. A couple of our guests were smitten with him and hung out by his crate to keep him company. After class was done I still had a bit of Jedi's dinner left over. Jedi got to meet a nice young (7 month old) boxer who had hung out after class, and then we got to show that family his tricks! They were pretty impressed with his Beep-Beep and the "pee trick" that his backing into "bottom" has turned into. I'll have to be sure to get that one on the next video.

We didn't get out of there until almost 9:00 and I had one pooped puppy at the end (he ran out of gas with three stairs left to go on the way out). I stopped at Walmart on the way home to restock on yogurt for the dogs and when I came back out to the van he didn't even lift up his head! We went out and he went potty, then he's pretty much been crashed since we got back in the house. Wee dude is tuckered out from his action-packed day! I'm sure he'll be back and ready for more tomorrow.

Day 22 - Crossing Meadows (11 weeks old!)

Jedi is 11 weeks old today! This also marks the three-week mark that he came to live with us. In some ways it seems like just yesterday, and in others it feels like he's been here forever already. He's fitting in well with the crew, with even Luke tolerating it when Jedi jumps up to lick his face. Kaiser is still a jerk to him in Kaiser's special jerky way, but it's getting less and less. In general I think everyone has accepted that he's here to stay.

Last night at dinner I decided to introduce Jedi to the treadmill! I just got the treadmill a few months ago to help me rehab an injury and haven't had an opportunity to really make it part of any training program for the dogs yet. They were introduced to it during a couple of cruddy spells where we couldn't get outside due to snow/ice/cold, but I'm the sort who definitely prefers to walk outdoors if at all possible. While we won't be needing the treadmill any time soon, I figured now would be a good time to get Jedi introduced to it so that he'll be ready to go next winter when we do need it.

I started out just clicking for any interaction with the treadmill in a stationary position. It was funny to watch him offer side-legs and bottom on the edge of the treadmill, as these are the behaviors we've been practicing with stationary stuff lately (this was a bit higher, though!). He figured it out quickly enough, though, and once he had that down I turned the treadmill onto the lowest speed. The movement didn't scare him, but he wasn't sure what to do about it. He would put just one or two paws on the moving belt at first, but he did progress to getting his whole body up there before I ran out of his dinner.

I decided to go ahead and hit up the treadmill with him again this morning to expand on our success from last night. He started right where he left off and had no problem getting on the moving belt today. I slowly increased the speed and had him practice getting on and off the moving belt. I'm not worried about how fast we can go at the moment, only that he remains comfortable with being on there. I bumped the speed up to 0.8 mph today and he never acted like anything we did was too much. Here is the video from our session this morning:

Jedi's outing of the day was a trip to Onalaska and a walk around the Crossing Meadows shopping area, along with a nice walk around an adjoining neighborhood. Kizzy got to go along for the ride today. I remembered to throw some toys in the crate for Jedi today, as they were going to have to sit in the van while I got a much needed massage (I had a big kink in my neck -- my sleep patterns are still in puppy mode). I stopped right before my appointment to let Jedi go potty since it's a half hour drive to get there and they'd be sitting for an hour. I'm thankful that he's so good about going when asked!

Because the dogs had been running around like loons all morning, I'm pretty sure he was ready for a nap. When I got back out to the van he was all blinky-eyed, so I know they'd been quiet in there. We drove over to the far edge of the Sam's Club lot to hit up the start of our walk today. There is a nice trail that goes behind all of the businesses in the Crossing Meadows shopping area. It runs parallel to the interstate so it's far from serene, but it's a nice little walking path.

After a point the trail turns and goes under the road and leads into a nice little neighborhood in Onalaska. Just as we were turning to go through the tunnel some idiot came blasting through on a dirt bike. No, motorized vehicles are not allowed on that path -- but hey, new experience for Jedi, I guess. He didn't seem too thrilled by the encounter, but he did recover quickly.

The road led to a nice little park, where we were passed by a boy on a scooter (another new experience!). Jedi was unsure of the girl being pushed on a swing, too. I guess that's the first time he's seen that? There were a couple of little girls on bikes eying up the dogs and I asked if they wanted to put them, but they declined. I'm scary, I guess.

We wrapped around the neighborhood and encountered more fun stuff like moving vehicles, barking dogs, a guy weed-whacking, and someone mowing their lawn. Jedi isn't too keen about the loud motor stuff, but he did better walking past the lawnmower than he did when I ran it at my house!

We crossed back under the road and turned the other direction. We wound around and ended up going back to the van on the walkway that runs in front of the businesses -- so there was a lot more activity. Jedi definitely had a lot of new stuff thrown at him today and he handled it like a champ. When we got back to the van we'd been out for almost 50 minutes! Wow, longer than I expected, but we move pretty slowly yet.

He totally crashed on the trip home. One tired puppy! Let's see how long that lasts.  :o)