Jedi is 16 weeks old today! He officially survived his first 3-day trial, which included crating inside the whole weekend! I was lazy for breakfast again, so Jedi ate out of the bowl for breakfast again this morning. This also allowed me to get a bunch of pumpkin into him, as he started having the runs yesterday -- likely from the trachea and other stuff he's been getting in his crate at the trial.
We didn't have quite as much down time at the trial today due to having one less class in the middle of the day. I still made sure to get Jedi out to run in the field across the street. We played with the ball on the rope and after several fetches to get his ya-yas out we worked on our wait/release. He did really well with them. As he started to get tired he seemed to notice a dog across the field playing frisbee, but he was a good boy and stuck with me. I made sure to give him a couple extra throws after I put the leash back on so that he doesn't learn to associate the leash going on with the fun coming to an end.
After he cooled off in the crate for a bit I brought Jedi out for his lunch. We visited the measuring table again today. Jedi didn't shy away at all as I moved the measuring arm up, down, and all around him while he ate. Hopefully this is something we can continue to work on at future trials. In the event that Jedi measures anywhere near a cutoff point, I would like to make sure he's as relaxed as possible so that we don't end up with any sort of inflated measurement. Once he was done eating we went into the arena with a toy and just sat in the chair and watched. Well, I watched, Jedi tugged. Once he started to wind down I had him come up into my lap. He didn't seem to notice the agility until the last dog. He's definitely more visual that way -- The sounds of dogs barking and carrying on didn't phase him in the least, but seeing another dog run is super exciting.
When we got home today I had to mow the lawn. Jedi initially saw me pulling the mower out of the garage and went back into the house to try to avoid it. I was able to call him back out into the yard and shut the gate to keep him out with the rest of us -- the yard is big, he has plenty of space to get away from the mower if that's what he wants. He actually did fine once I got started, though. He hung out under the a-frame again for most of the time, but there were also a couple of instances where he came out and wandered around a bit, too, so he's getting a lot more relaxed about the lawn mower in general. It helps that the other dogs are good role models for him.
I wasn't planning on giving Jedi another play session tonight after all of this, but he had other ideas. He looked just desperate as he stared at the toy box in the garage, so I gave in. We tried something new with the cones today -- I added a second cone to the mix. We started out having Jedi distinguish between a tight send around a single cone versus going out and around both cones. I was surprised at how naturally this came to him. He read my body language really well. I was even able to move the cones apart a bit further to make the push to the second cone a little more challenging.
After a bit I moved the cones even further apart and started to introduce the concept of a figure eight. This one was harder for Jedi at first because he's used to just going around the cone and flying after his toy. Now he actually had to pay attention and come into my hand. I held my ground and after a few times of circling around me to come back to the toy he figured out to come straight to my hand after going around the cone. Once he got that in both directions I was able to combine it into a full single figure eight. He's a quick learner!I was lazy again for dinner tonight. I think our class with Silvia Trkman is supposed to start back up this week, so we'll have to get back to work!
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