Day 2 - First hike!

Today was all about finding the new normal. Jedi did really well for his first night sleeping in a crate. I woke up twice and took him outside (the first time I just woke up, the second time he was getting restless). He was ready to get up a bit after 6:00, so I figured we'd just stay up and try to get him tired out a bit before I had to start work. By the way, being able to work from home while I raise Jedi is the biggest blessing ever!

Jedi was introduced to the clicker at breakfast. We are enrolled in Silvia Trkman's puppy class that starts tomorrow and I watched her Puppy Diary DVD in preparation. I'm going to try very hard to use all of Jedi's meals as training opportunities. We'll see how long this lasts. In his first session I just rewarded anything he did as a way of loading the clicker and getting him used to it. I tried mixing the food he was sent home with in with the Fromm I plan on feeding, but he ended up refusing to eat any of the stuff he came with and only eating the Fromm. I guess this means we'll be cutting over cold turkey. While I plan to feed kibble meals by hand, I also fed a canned food/yogurt/pumpkin mixture after our morning training session. I hope the pumpkin takes care of any stomach upset that might stem from the sudden change of food and all of the other changes to the little guy's life.

I quickly discovered that the easiest way to get through a work meeting was sitting inside the puppy pen. Admittedly there was a lot of distraction today, but I still managed to get my work done. Thankfully the weather was nice, so we have been able to spend a lot of time outside.

My mission is to get Jedi out and about to have as many new experiences at as many new places as possible for as long as I can manage. Our first outing was up to the Experimental Forest outside of Bangor. This is a nice big area of public-access land. There is a trail system, but I opted to just travel one of the big open field roads on this trek. Jedi did awesome! He doesn't have a lot of stamina yet (obviously) and I ended up carrying him as much as he ran, but boy can he run! He's a little bullet.