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?).