Day 28 - Brotherly Love!

Today was the big day -- Jedi would get to see his brother, Pyro! And I tell you, were it not for knowing that they would be at the trial today there is a good chance I would have turned the alarm off, rolled over, and gone back to sleep. I didn't sleep well last night, mostly thanks to the house getting up to 82 degrees yesterday. (Yeah, I'm too cheap to run my air conditioning.) Thankfully today was way cooler (70 degrees), which meant that the dogs could easily crate out of the van. The trial was teeny-tiny and it probably would have been a good opportunity to give Jedi the experience of crating inside, but that day will come soon enough and I'm too lazy to drag crates around when I don't have to.

Our morning schedule was pretty much identical to last Saturday. The alarm went off at 4:30 and I dutifully got up and fed Jedi his breakfast with the usual training session, then gave him his "second breakfast" in the crate while I got dressed. I packed the FitBone, a small target, and a food dish for his lunch training session, figuring that we'd once again do it at the trial before coming home.

We got on the road by 5:30 and the trip over went very well. I had a bully stick in Jedi's crate this time and that kept him busy for a while. He chewed on the water dish once, probably to voice his displeasure at it being empty. That crate has a tiny little dish in it, I should probably go ahead and get a bigger one if he's going to continue to drink 5 gallons of water a day.

We got to the trial at 7:30 and after walking the course Jedi had a couple of minutes to get to say hello to Pyro before I had to run Secret. After Secret's run I took Jedi inside for a while so that he could get some time in around all of the trial noise. He did super today and was totally focused on his toys. We didn't get a chance to "watch" any agility, but I don't know if that's necessarily something I want him practicing anyhow. There was a lot of barking while I had him in there and it didn't bother him at all.

I got to spend some one-on-one time with Pyro later on when Jedi was in the van. I just love the little guy. He and Jedi have a lot in common and share a lot of the same mannerisms. It will be so fun to watch them both grow up.

I had another chunk of time after Secret ran Standard, so we took the boys out to the big fenced-in area in the back. One other dog was back there at the time and all three of them got along really well. Both of the boys have a pretty mild play style (at least at this point in time) so things didn't get too rough and tumble, but they really seemed to enjoy their time together.

After we were all done running agility for the day we took all of the dogs to the big field again. I kept Secret occupied with her frisbee, but Kizzy & Kaiser both got to meet and play with Pyro. It was quite the fun little crew. Everyone got in lots of running and was good and pooped by the end.

The trial was small and got done super early, so even after all of this it was only about 11:30. I had debated just doing Jedi's lunch session when we got home, but I figured it would be good to get the experience of training in a different setting. He did super well, but did get distracted when a gentleman walked by, and then again when the gentleman (with warning) released a horde of poodles from his RV. Jedi was able to refocus back on me during all of that, though, so that's a win.

I had a minor meltdown on the way home when it appeared that my phone had eaten all of the pictures and video that I took today. As you can see by the fact that there are pictures in this blog post, thankfully I was able to recover them. I would have been the saddest person ever if I had no memories from the brother's meet-up today. Thankfully that's not the case, though, and now I have this video to look back on, too!

Jedi rode home in the big crate and I had Kizzy ride in the little crate up front so that everyone could have their pig ear in peace (not sure why I bothered, as both Kizzy and Jedi were too tired to even eat theirs today). I topped off his water dish before we left and whether it was that, the bigger crate, or a combo of the two, the ride home was much better than last time and he pretty much didn't make a peep.

Since we got home, Jedi has been going pretty much a million miles per hour nonstop. He continues to go in and out the dog door without prompting and seems to be using it to let himself out to potty now. I finally had to make Secret come inside a bit ago because she has decided that Jedi is her own personal plaything, and since I lock all of her toys in the garage then she will use him instead. It's nonstop bitey-face, wrestling, and running laps. Kizzy is screaming and wooing less, so she must be getting used to it (or she was just too tired to care). Jedi did move on to Kizzy after I made Secret come in the house -- and apparently swimming was on the agenda at that point. He does love those pools...

Jedi figured out how to jump onto the window seat to be able to look out the front window today. It took quite a bit of effort but he was pretty determined to get it done. I imagine soon enough I'll get an opportunity to take a picture of FIVE dogs in the window now.

Dinner training was Jedi's introduction to the agility table. It's always been out there, he always goes under it, and he's been on top of it plenty of times as well. I sat next to it and first clicked him for just getting on it. After that was solid I held off to see what it would take to shape the down -- and, well, it was the first thing he offered, so that was easy enough. We did several more reps of that and he seemed to have figured it out easily enough. I spent the rest of his dinner on the teeter. I still don't really get his attitude around this object. Today he ran right over to it and was so eager to play that he started to run up the plank -- I dove in to hold it down with my foot before he got up to the tipping point and got him redirected in the correct direction. After a couple of bottoms I let him finish up his dinner while I moved the teeter around.