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)