Day 52 - Vet Appointment & Agility Class (week 2)

Sadly, my back did not improve overnight. If anything it got worse, and I struggled to even let Jedi out of his crate this morning. Bless him for being so patient! Breakfast was pretty low key -- We just hung out in the living room and did the pee trick again. I tried to get Jedi to use his left hind leg for a change and he just got frustrated. He's got the right leg down pat with some impressive lift now, though.

I ended up staying home today because I couldn't manage to get myself dressed in time to leave early enough to make my 8:30 meeting. That meant that I had to do my team meeting via Google hangout during the dogs' most active time of the day -- Jedi made one appearance when he jumped up on the couch behind me because the other dogs were barking at something. I'm glad he didn't pull one of his lovely run across the keyboard maneuvers that are becoming his signature lately.

I managed to get a massage appointment booked for noon, but it was too hot out to take any dogs along for the ride. I got home at 2:00 and Jedi had his vet appointment at 2:15, so lunch was going to have to wait. We walked over to the vet clinic and Jedi was a good boy walking through the neighborhood. If anything he was pokey and complaining that it was too hot.

Jedi weighed in at 18.3lbs at his appointment today -- I thought for sure he was going to hit 20lbs at this appointment, so I was happily surprised that he isn't as gargantuan as I thought. I had the backpack full of toys along, so we passed time in the room playing with various toys. We just had a tech appointment for Jedi's Lyme booster today, so it was a pretty quick in and out once the tech came in. He didn't much care for the Lyme vaccine the first time, but this time it was a non-ordeal. I hit Jedi up with aspirin just in case we encountered any soreness like last time, but I haven't noticed anything this time.

A dog came into the clinic while we were checking out that Jedi didn't seem to care for much. He started barking and didn't much feel like stopping, even after I took him around the corner of the counter. I pulled a toy out of the bag and he was easily redirected at that point.

Jedi finally got to eat lunch once we got home a little before 3:00. I tried to go outside to work on the hold trick, but we were chased inside by rain so I brought the pole inside and we worked on it there.

I really waffled on whether we should go to class tonight. Between my back and the way Jedi reacted to the last Lyme vaccine I didn't know if there was much point. I'm pretty stubborn, though (some might say stupid), and when 4:00 rolled around I decided to give it a go. I won't lie, there were several points on the drive where I came close to turning around to come home (I didn't sleep well last night and that didn't help things much, either). I pushed on, though, and I'm glad I did because we had a fun night!

We started the class by going around for a little refresher on the names of everyone's dogs and how they got their name. I kept Jedi occupied by having him target the lid of his food dish. Then we did a group exercise where everyone worked on stay/wait (glad I practiced) and releasing to a release word without any motion. I'm not sure if I've ever really done that (no motion) with Jedi, but he didn't have any trouble releasing on "okay" alone. He did have a terrible time with a sit-stay, though, because all he would offer was the pee trick. I was using a toy through this exercise so he was pretty amped up and cheated a bit on some of his stays. Homework, I guess, especially with toys.

Next everyone was introduced to restrained retrieves. I think 3/4 of the class brought squeaky toys tonight and it was during this portion of the night that every single one of them decided to start squeaking their toys. Jedi got to demonstrate again, which he was more than happy to do. We didn't continue to do this exercise with all of the mad squeaking going on, though, because Jedi was starting to lose his mind a bit. Instead we just focused on being able to tug among all of the squeaking (I'm telling you, there was a lot of squeaking). Jedi did awesome. Last week he really struggled to work through that.

When we split up our group started with plank work. Everyone was introduced to two on/two off, which Jedi was happy to demonstrate. I again used a toy through this exercise to proof Jedi's bottom. He did pretty well, but he missed several in his excitement. We also took a turn on the plank that was raised on a couple of milk jugs to get the dogs used to walking on something above the ground. Yup, no fear, although the little goober did let his attention slide and slipped off the edge a couple of times.

On the other side we were introduced to the chute. Our group of 3 did well and the fabric was quickly let out. After a few passes through the full (AKC) length being dropped on him I said he would probably be fine going through on his own -- he was. He's already pulling like a freight train to get into the chute and tunnel.

When we switched sides again they wanted us to shape going through the jump standard. I would call it Linda Mecklenberg's one-jump exercise minus any bars. The only problem Jedi had with this was that he was offering other behaviors (like the pee trick, again) on the jump, so he went over it sideways more often than not.

For our last rotation we did restrained recalls through the tunnel -- and they started to add the slightest curve to the tunnel (so slight that I was like, is that supposed to be like that?). Hooray for restrained recalls! Jedi is a fruit loop. That said, he wasn't screaming or doing anything to bring attention to himself, but for some reason almost every dog in the class was fixated on him tonight. Three different dogs left their handlers to run to Jedi tonight. He completely ignored all of them because he was just fixated on his toy. I can't get too upset when this happens -- Jedi did manage to get away from me once tonight when he heard one of those squeakers and I didn't have him in working mode. Last week I said I should bring my tug with a squeaker in it (I forgot), but now I'm almost determined to get through this without a stupid squeaker.

Jedi was pretty pooped by the end of class because he'd been going nonstop for the entire hour again. It didn't stop him from wanting to play more, though, and trying to drag me onto the turf for more play time. Once in the van he had a bit of an overtired toddler moment where he fussed a bit, but he soon crashed for the rest of the drive home.

I'd gone through almost all of Jedi's food in class tonight, so he got a little extra while the other dogs ate their late dinner. We just played with the pole grab, although Jedi started out just certain that I wanted him to do the pee trick again. He's a little obsessed with that one at the moment.