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!