Day 43 - Copeland Park (14 weeks old!)

Jedi is 14 weeks old today! My parents remarked how much bigger he had gotten when they dropped their dogs off on Friday. While I see him every day and the change is not as immediately noticeable, I can tell he's been growing a lot lately. I suppose he's getting to the point where I could probably start tracking height along with weight, but then again, it's not like I can stop anything from happening. As I learned with Secret, he'll get as big as he gets. But those ears, they are still up!

We were up at 7:00 this morning because Jedi was starting to get restless in his crate. I can't really blame him, we went to bed just after 10:00 so that's a long time for him. Were it not for our guests I might have tried to go back to bed, but I figured it was easiest just to get up and get everyone fed. Jedi worked on pivots around the balance disc (still propped on the paw pods for added difficultly), pivots to the leg, and then we worked on targeting with the right paw. I switched everything around in my hand so that my left hand was presenting the target and clicker, and my right hand had the food. This made all the difference in the world and Jedi seemed to finally understand. He's definitely not as coordinated in offering his right paw, but he's trying hard and he'll get there.

I've been needing to mow the lawn pretty much this entire last week and couldn't put it off any longer. I went out and got started around 10:00 since I knew it was going to be a warm one today. Jedi continues to do better with the lawn mower each time. Today he elected to hang out under the a-frame with Luke for pretty much the entire duration. When I had to move the a-frame out of the  middle of the yard he ended up retreating under the deck with a few of the other dogs who were avoiding the sun.

After the lawn was mowed I filled up the pools again. Jedi continues to grow fonder of the hose every time it comes out, although today it was Wes that he was competing with as we filled the pools. Jedi got plenty of hose time in for himself, though, and managed to get himself good and wet. Then he rolled around in the fresh cut grass. Wet puppies and cut grass don't mix very well -- or should I say, they mix too well. It's a good thing I plain old don't care if my dogs are "clean" or not. The dirt falls off them eventually.

Blessedly, there was much napping this afternoon. So much so that I actually managed to miss Jedi's lunch. Oops! I realized around 3:00 that I'd completely failed to feed him, so we went down to the basement together and worked on his wait/stay. One of the requirements for the class we start this week is that the dog have a "developing sit/stay," so, well, I figured I should work on it. We did a bit more targeting and ended with some spoon/bowl since he likes that one so much. We are probably at the point where I should start to vary the objects to generalize the skill a bit more.

For our outing of the day I decided to pack up Jedi and Secret to go hit up Copeland Park in La Crosse. There was quite a bit going on there for a Sunday afternoon! I parked all the way down at the end, so we started there and walked the perimeter of the park. There were a bunch of people meeting for some event under the shelter, with several of them out playing frisbee and football in the nearby grass. The dogs didn't really take notice of them at all.

We stopped to visit the water play area on the way by. It's a fun little cement area where water randomly shoots out of various fountains for various durations. I thought for sure Jedi would go nuts over this, but he didn't really show it any interest at all. That might be because he found part of a leftover sandwich in the grass. I was not successful at getting it out of his mouth before it disappeared.

I didn't have much better success at getting the dogs to pose on some landscaping next to the baseball field. Nobody wants to pose when it's hot outside (we got up to about 86, I think). As we approached the water side of the park I noticed a little path down to the river, so I let the dogs go down there and explore/cool off. They both went in the water but were then more interested in searching through the tall grass to find whatever nasties people had left behind, so we got out of there.

I stayed off the playground equipment since there were people around. Most of the people were over by the water area by this time, though. Jedi was super interested in all of the running and screaming -- I probably should have just hung out there for a bit until they got boring. He was fine -- not reactive or anything, just very curious. He was also pretty interested in the game of basketball going on, and I did let him watch that for a bit as he tried to figure out what was going on.

There was a grassy area just past the basketball/tennis courts, so I got out the frisbees and let the dogs chase some plastic for a bit. Someone went walking by with a dog while we were playing so I opted on the side of safety and hooked Jedi up to the long line. That's silly, really, because he is 150% focused on the toy when he's playing. I think an elephant could walk by and he wouldn't notice.

We had played in the shade to keep things as cool as possible, but both dogs had their tongues hanging out at the end. I had water in the van, but both dogs were a bit obsessed with the river in front of us as we made our way back. I saw a path down to the little beach area, so I relented and let the dogs go down to the water. Both of them immediately went in, and since Secret ended up going in up past her chest this meant that Jedi was going to go for a full-on swim. He went out a few more times and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself.

When we got home I noted that the rechargeable battery for my weed trimmer was charged, so I took it out to clean up around the dog walk and to whack down the jungle in the dog pen. Jedi was NOT a fan of the weed trimmer at all. First he ran all the way around the yard and then he ended up high-tailing it into the house through the dog door. It's always interesting to see his reaction to stuff he finds scary, since overall he is such a confident puppy.

For dinner tonight we attempted more pivots to the leg, but Jedi lost interest in those pretty quickly (he gets sassy when he's tired). We finished with more paw targets. I moved the target back and forth between hands and he seems to understand that he needs to reach with the paw closest to the hand holding the target. Another session or two and we should probably see what happens if I try to get him to cross his paws with the right paw instead of the left.