Day 46 - Bangor walk (high school)

If anyone is wondering how long it takes for my house to recover from a weekend full of playing with visitors, the answer is two days. Monday and Tuesday were incredibly quiet -- for everyone, not just Jedi. Everyone was back to "normal" again this morning. I picked up the yard before I left for work since I didn't have a chance to do it yesterday and all five dogs (even Luke!) were running around and playing with each other. They're usually a bit more subdued in the morning. We didn't go to bed until midnight last night due to the fact that I had homework that needed to be done after we got home from class, so I wish I had their energy.

I dropped pivoting from Jedi's breakfast work and this seemed to make him happy. Granted, he was more awake than the last several mornings, too, so that probably didn't hurt. We ended up spending the majority of the session just doing paw touches. He's getting much better at offering the right paw. I tried to get a bit of crossing, but it was more flailing than directed placement. We just rotated kibble from Fromm to Earthborn Holistic and the kibble pieces are considerably bigger. The training sessions will go a bit faster now because of this.

We got lucky and I beat the rain home today. I dumped the pools and refilled them because they were both full of bird poop. I've been seeing more birds hanging out and drinking from them, so I suppose this is an unfortunate side effect. The dogs drink out of the pools a lot so I want to keep them relatively clean. It is gross, hot, and humid, so I went ahead and filled the pools again. Jedi got absolutely soaked going after the hose. His ears go floppy when they are drenched with water, but thankfully they pop back up when he shakes it all off.

Once the pools were set I grabbed Jedi's lunch and we had our training session outside. We did teeter bangs and Jedi did a great job at holding his bottoms. We moved over to the dog walk to finish his lunch and did bottoms there. Instead of just having him jump on from the side this time I had him go up the plank a bit, turn around, and then drive into the bottom. My dog walk is only a couple of feet off the ground, so no real worries about anything -- and heck, the little stinker has already gone over it on his own out in the yard. He isn't afraid of anything.

We got in a game of frisbee after lunch and made it inside before the rain started. We had a small thunderstorm blow through that came with a few boomers. Whenever there was a loud crack of thunder I went, "Wheeeee!!!!!" and gave Jedi treats. He didn't startle in the least at the thunder, but still, I figure let's make a positive association.

I planned to take Wes & Lexie's stuff up to my parent's house after work and luckily the rain stopped right in time. Actually, we drove through a downpour but came out to sun on the other side. I let Jedi come in the house with me to check on things but we didn't stay long. We got back in the van and drove to Bangor to go for a walk. I'd brought along both Kaiser and Kizzy as well, as these three have been doing well walking together. One of these days I'll just have to add Secret.

I parked in the high school parking lot. It was empty and there was nothing going on at the school -- I hadn't figured there would be because of the rain, but it would have been nice to stumble upon a baseball game or something. Instead we took off down the road and took a walk through town.

This was a sound-filled walk for Jedi. We arrived shortly before 6:00, so we got to hear the lovely 6:00 whistle. We also walked past a church that was playing the church bells for a super long time. I wasn't even aware they did that (they were playing songs). There were also about three trains that went through town while we were walking. As expected, Jedi didn't pay any attention to any of this.

We cut down through the park so that the dogs would have the opportunity to cool off and get a drink in the creek if they wanted. Well of course, they all barged straight into the water and Jedi immediately started swimming. Too bad for them that they were all on 6' leashes, so there wasn't much they could do. I swear Jedi would live his life soaking wet if he could.

After that we just walked up and around Labus and then cut through the schools to get back to the van. Someone was playing basketball on the elementary playground or else I probably would have taken the dogs over to play for a bit. We were only out for a little over a half hour tonight because I had to get home for school. It was gross anyhow, and we'd walked a lot of hills, so the dogs were ready to be done.

Tonight Jedi did pivots to the leg outside for his dinner. We also spent some time working on his wait/stay and he did great (notice the excellent distance I got in front of the school sign tonight!). Then we did some fun spins and roll-overs (luring), and finished up with a couple more leg pivots.

Our class with Silvia is going on break for two weeks starting on Friday, so if I'm going to submit video and get feedback I need to get it done tomorrow! I finally checked in on lesson four and it looks like side legs and putting stuff in other stuff are both on the list, so we can check that off. Something new to work on is holding an obstacle with the paws/legs. Working on the stay behavior was also on the list, so we'll continue to build on that.