Day 20 - Bangor Park

I worked from home again today, so Jedi was a happy boy for that -- and while it was far from warm and sunny, at least the rain went away, so we were able to spend a little more time outside. The two meetings I had today got canceled, so it was a pretty easy day, puppy-schedule-wise. Additionally, this seemed to be the day where Jedi decided to catch up on his sleep, as he blessed me with a couple of exceptionally long naps.

He got to spend pretty much the entire day out of the puppy pen since he was being so good. I also propped the screen door open so that he'd have free access to go in and out as needed. I'm pretty certain he went out to do his business on his own at least twice, judging by the way he came galloping back in looking for a treat (which he got).

Secret continues to grow her affection towards the little guy. I caught this exchange between them this morning.

I got some really nice feedback from Silvia Trkman on the training video I submitted for class yesterday. She thinks Jedi is doing great and offered that I should start to fade my hands from the picture during pivoting. That's just one of the reasons I'm finding this class helpful, as that's the sort of thing I would totally continue to do and probably why my trick-training skills tend to fade out after a point. I need to build more independence in the behaviors. I started to put this into play during our dinner training session tonight and Jedi did well with it. I didn't do a full session at lunch today, instead opting to use his meal during nail trimming. Part of it he got while I trimmed his nails, part of it he got for sitting and watching nicely, and the rest he got for pivoting on the deck with all of the dogs around. This is the third time we've done nails since Jedi came home. We're mostly still working on coming to an agreement on his preferred position. Once we find that he's totally fine, but before that he's pretty squirmy and chews on the nail trimmer.

While heaven knows there are still hundreds of new places I can take Jedi, for some reason I'm hitting the point where I can't decide where to go, or what to do, or who to take! In the end I decided that Luke should go along today, because he will be left home by himself tomorrow when the rest of us go to the agility trial. Luke isn't up for something that requires a lot of walking (definitely not on pavement), so I decided that today we would go to the park in Bangor.

I hoped that maybe there would be a baseball game or something going on, but I guess it's probably too early in the year for such things. There were some kids playing on playground equipment, though, carrying on and making quite a bit of noise. Jedi noticed them as we were unloading from the van but his attention was easily brought back to me.

We wandered through the bleachers by the ball field, walked through the picnic tables in the shelter, and made our way back to the shooting range. I noticed a set of stairs under the bridge that led up to the bike trail, so I went up and down them with Jedi to get him some experience on new stairs. We were surprised by someone coming down the bike trail with their giant black lab, but Jedi didn't even seem to notice them as we went back down the stairs. Then, though, we ran into someone else out walking their dog and oops, I didn't have Jedi on leash at that point because we'd been the only people in that area of the park. This is when I learned that he will go say hello! Thankfully the people and the dog (female, apparently recently had puppies) were very nice and he had a nice happy greeting before we moved on (he did come away easily after saying hello).

At that point I put him on leash because we were going to be going next to the water and I figured I would need a way to fish him out if he decided to go for a swim. Then we hit up the playground equipment where he got to climb the steps onto the platform and pose for pictures.

After that we made our way into the next section of the park, where you cross a little bridge to get to a good-sized open field. Again, I was glad to have the leash on because Jedi had a puppy, "Oh, what is that?" moment as we crossed the bridge.

I took the opportunity to play some tug and chase games in the big open area with the toys I'd brought along. It was during this play time that the 6:00 whistle (siren) sounded in Bangor, so Jedi got to hear that obnoxious noise for the first time. He kept tugging right through it, so I guess it didn't bother him. Almost immediately after the whistle ended a freight train came through. The train whistle definitely startled him more than the siren had, but after a moment he was back to playing again.

Not long after, a couple walking a border collie came down the hill. The dog was being a bit nuts and this is the first time Jedi has expressed concern about another dog's presence (even though it was some distance away). He woofed at the dog and I was able to redirect him with the toy. Unfortunately I think the people were thinking "play date" as they started to come closer and were asking questions about Jedi. I answered them, but made it clear that I was focusing on my dog as I continued to redirect him further away from them and their dog. In the end, I was able to keep Jedi focused and playing with me, so that's a win.

They built a small skate park in that section of the park at some point (I don't recall seeing it before, so who knows how long it has been there). There was nobody there, so we went and walked around and played on some of the ramps a bit. There were only a couple that were puppy-friendly and I had Jedi cross over those a few times.

We ended with another walk next to the creek and around the perimeter of the field. All told, we spent about 45 minutes in the park, so it was a pretty good adventure. Luke enjoyed the time out as well. Poor old guy just doesn't get to do much anymore.