Day 31 - Bike trail (sand mines) and EARS!

Jedi had a bit of a crabby day when it came to his training sessions. This morning I tried to start with pivot and he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it. He threw himself around on the floor, climbed over all the props, and offered pretty much anything other than pivot. I finally relented and sat down to work on the spoon trick. That made him happy and he was actually pretty successful.

Today was an office day for me, so Jedi was in the crate until about 1:00 again. I think he had probably just woken up from a nap because he was again pretty crabby for his lunch session. I tried to wait him out to again start with the pivot, but after about five minutes of nothing I finally gave up, sat on the floor with him, and did other stuff. I think he started to make a real connection between the spoon and the bowl in this session, with some obvious efforts to put the two together.

Our outing of the day was a trip to one of the closer bike trail outlets (because I have a lot of homework I have to get done tonight). We parked at the same spot we went the first time we walked the trail, but went the other direction this time -- the route that runs parallel to the sand mines. It's also the section of trail that runs closest to the roads, which I'm not fond of, but thankfully Jedi has shown no motion sensitivity to cars so I didn't figure seeing them off to the side would be a distraction.

I'm pretty sure there was something dead in the weeds at one point, as Jedi got sucked into the area off the trail and took a good long time to respond to my recall cue (all of the dogs were trying to pull in that direction -- I'm shocked that Secret actually came). When he did come, though, he was hauling! He enjoyed getting lots of running time in this afternoon. I should have brought his tuggy leash along instead of the leather leashes I had for him and Secret, because if he wasn't running he wanted to tug. He was just super full of himself tonight.

We met one biker while we were out (all dogs go on leash when we meet people). We've seen a few bikes now and so far Jedi hasn't really paid them any attention. Secret went through a phase where she chased them, though, so we are always very careful about when we go back off leash after we've been passed.

I put everyone on leash to walk past the dead thing on the way back, and then just kept them on leash until we got back to the van. It was good practice for if I ever get back to walking everyone together here in town. They did pretty well! Jedi is starting to do less of the back and forth stuff. We met a couple of people walking on the trail towards the end, coming back from a fishing trip it looked like. Jedi just wanted to say hello and didn't even seem to notice the big fishing pole looming above him.

When I got home from work today I saw there was a package sitting by my door. I assumed it was the leashes I just ordered from Chewy.com, but no, it was the bottle of Torbot skin adhesive that I just ordered yesterday! I decided to order a bottle so that I'd have it on hand if I decided I wanted to take things into my own hands and set Jedi's ears. Well..... It was here, I couldn't not do it.

I stopped at Walmart on the way home from our walk and bought the moleskin. Jedi was actually really awesome about the whole thing (I'm sure our two-mile hike helped). He didn't care at all for getting his ears cleaned out with rubbing alcohol, but after that he was really patient. I think I fumbled a bit for my first time, mostly regarding the shape and getting everything cut correctly. The right ear ended up a little wonky, but that's the ear that stands up on its own (especially after being shaved) so I'm not too worried. I'm pleased with the left ear, though, and instantly felt better when I saw it standing up. Yup, I want them pricked.

Now we'll see how long this lasts. He messed with them a bit when I first put them in, but has been leaving them alone since then. I have no idea how long these things stay in or how I'm supposed to get them out if they don't fall out on their own. We'll just play it by ear (ha ha) and I figure at least now I'm prepared for the next round.

Jedi was back to normal for his dinner training session. Still a little sassy, but at least more willing to appease me. We started with pivots and got good turns in both directions (funny, he's actually starting to prefer the right now). I'm trying to get him to target with the right paw so that we can do shake/wave/cross in the other direction, but that just seems to piss him off at the moment. I got him back by having him back into bottoms, and then we ended with a little bit of spoon, where we had some really good on-purpose connections between the spoon and the dish! I saw that our next lesson was posted this morning, but I haven't really had a chance to look at it closely. It doesn't look like we're introducing too much new stuff this week, but getting them to use both paws was definitely on the list. I'll probably reach out to Silvia for help with that one.