I was a little better this morning, in that it only took me about two minutes to get out of bed instead of five. Sigh. I took some time to ice and stretch before feeding the dogs and I managed to get through a round of teeter slams for Jedi's breakfast. Jedi gets pretty excited while I'm feeding the other dogs, so I've been working on directing his energy to a toy instead of trying to latch on to me (feet) or one of the other dogs (usually Kizzy). He's doing a really good job redirecting that energy to whatever toy is closest. If I had more hands I'd try to get video of him violently shaking it as I distribute bowls to everyone. I had to go into the office this morning, so Jedi was happy to get his Kong today -- at least for that he knows to go straight to the crate when I start handing them out.
When I got home we went outside to do some leg pivots. Jedi will come to the left side without a target, but he's kind of clueless about keeping on the leg for anything but turns at the moment. I was unable to get him to come to the right leg without putting the target/lid on the ground. At that point he doesn't really even step on the target, but he understands what it is that I want. We'll have to get back to working on this.
After I had my lunch we went back outside to wear Jedi out before my 2:00 meeting. I picked up the yard and then we played ball. I took video today to show how intense he is about his tennis balls. If the quality comes through well enough, you'll also get to see just how horrible the gnats are here right now. It's disgusting to spend any amount of time outside because you get swarmed by gnats. Can't say that Jedi seems to notice or care.
I refilled the water bucket when we were done and Jedi decided that (and playing with the hose while I was filling the bucket) was good enough for swimming today. I'm kind of thankful that he didn't go diving in the poop pool. Gah, that thing needs to get emptied soon; it's gross.I like to keep the trialing dogs pretty low key the day before a trial (assuming I can actually run tomorrow...), so that meant Jedi was off to a solo outing today. I had a couple of errands to run, so I figured we'd just stay in Sparta tonight. I parked at Walgreens and we walked down Hwy 16 to Rudy's, turned up a block, and then walked back.
We didn't run into a lot of people tonight (surprising for how nice it is), but there was a lot of traffic along the highway. The surprise of the day was Jedi's reaction to big trucks -- apparently they are kind of scary now! It started with a large piece of farm machinery that rumbled past and seemed to take Jedi by surprise. As we rounded the corner up by Rudy's a big milk truck went past and Jedi scrambled to the end of his leash trying to get away. This was the first time he's really taken any notice of vehicles. It's also the first time he's had to face this sort of thing alone, so that may have had something to do with it as well. The street back was much quieter, but when we got back to the van we spent some time just sitting in the grass watching the vehicles go by and he did fine.
Towards the end of our route I walked by what looked like an alley that had a green sign saying, "West Side Park." Never heard of it. I looked down the driveway and saw there were a bunch of kids that looked to be having baseball practice. Hmm, I figured we could check it out.It was an interesting little park set back in the middle of some houses. With the exception of one newer playground set, there was a bunch of old stuff that appeared to be handmade out of wood and metal. One of these had a sway bridge, so I had Jedi climb up and go across the bridge a couple of times. It wasn't super bouncy, so he didn't really even notice it. He got to climb up onto the newer set as well -- it went a little higher than some of the others we've seen, so he got to have a nice view from the top.
We continued to walk the perimeter of the park. Jedi didn't seem to take note of the baseball team until we got right over by the fence where they had all of their stuff. Prior to that he was too busy finding a dead bird and then a dead rabbit (thankfully I noticed that one before we got too close). We also got to deal with a barking, fence-charging dog. It was our second of the night and thankfully both times Jedi was a super good boy and didn't react at all other than to give the dogs a look like, "You crazy!"
It wasn't a super long outing, we were only out for about a half hour (good thing we found that park or it would have been even shorter). It was a good experience for Jedi to go out by himself, though, and learn to handle stuff on his own. He walked very nicely on leash, too -- I hope I continue to be spoiled by his good leash manners, as I've really not had to put much effort into that at all. His only "fault" is that he still struggles a bit to stay on one side, although if I insist he complies -- so I guess the real problem is me, right?
For dinner we did a couple of teeter bangs and then worked bottoms on the dog walk. I probably should have ran Jedi after dinner again because he's been loony tunes since then. First he was running laps with the ice cubes I dumped out on the deck from my latest ice pack, and now he's convinced Kizzy to wrestle with him. She must have missed the memo about chilling the night before a trial! I guess we'll see how that goes tomorrow, eh?
He's so cute playing fetch!
ReplyDelete