Day 58 - Class Night

All of the excitement of the weekend caught up with my crew today and we had a relatively quiet morning. Jedi was wound up and in feet-chasing mode first thing this morning -- He also made quite a ruckus in his crate when the other dogs started stirring on the bed. The alarm hadn't gone off yet, though, so I wasn't getting up. I just ignored him and he quieted down again. It was raining during breakfast, so we did leg pivots in the living room. I've been able to abandon the target and Jedi is doing well with moving to each side. He does keep trying to target the dog bed in the living room with his back feet, though -- Hard to work around the distraction of so many target obstacles, I guess.

Jedi crashed by about 9:00 or so and stayed pretty quiet until lunch time. The rain was gone, so we went outside for his training session. I adjusted the teeter way down to puppy height -- the drop is just slightly higher than what Jedi was jumping on from the side. The first time he went over it there was a look of surprise on his face when it moved. But then he was like, "It moves!" and then it was game on and he was racing over and into his bottom. We also did plenty of slams hopping on the side. I'll have to try to get video tomorrow if the weather cooperates. We ended with some leg pivots.

After I ate lunch we went back outside for some play time, since Jedi was starting to go into crazy mode. We played with the two cones again, mixing up sending around a single cone, both cones, figure eights, coming to hand, and throwing the toy. I'm making sure to keep it fun, fun, fun and fast by not correcting anything -- with the exception of when I try to start him from my left and he circles to my right. That I fix. Really, though, he's reading my body really well. His turns to the right are nice and tight, while his turns to the left go a bit wide and will need a little more attention as we move forward. He makes progress so quickly, though, that I know he'll have nice wraps in both directions in no time.

Jedi played in the water bucket when we were done, and then got to play with the hose since I had to refill the water bucket after he splashed around in it. I think he has that game figured out and does it on purpose. Regardless, all of this fun play time did as intended and we had a nice quiet afternoon. Jedi woke up around 4:00 and I was still in the middle of something, so when he managed to find himself a paper bag and started to go to town on it, I just let it happen. I slightly regretted this when I had to start picking up the pieces, but he sure did enjoy himself.

Because he was so wired at this point, I decided it would be in my best interest to run some energy off of Jedi before we went to class tonight. We went out a bit before 5:00 and chased some tennis balls. This definitely helped take the edge off and Jedi crashed hard in the crate on the drive to West Salem. Kaiser got to come along tonight to be a new meet & greet dog for my advanced class, but he stayed in the crate for the puppy class.

There is one puppy who is always first to arrive and they get to class a bit early each week. This is the puppy that sends Jedi a bit over the top when they play, and this puppy gets a little too excited about seeing Jedi, so we used this opportunity to have both puppies NOT immediately play with each other and instead get them to focus on working with us until class started. Jedi did exceptionally well and we worked through a good portion of his dinner while he offered leg pivots. The other puppy owner pulled out a squeaky toy to help get her puppy's attention back on her -- Oh those dratted squeaky toys, but hooray for another training opportunity.

Jedi got a couple of timeouts during play time because he again gets a little hyper-focused on Massey. I watched very closely tonight and it's interesting to note that he rarely gets bitey or puts his teeth into Massey -- But he's VERY vocal and lays his entire body weight into the other puppy. Massey doesn't do a lot to get himself out of this situation, although there was one time where they reversed roles and I was glad to see this. Once the Dane started to get more active in play things settled down between Massey and Jedi and the three were able to do well together. Not sure where all of our other puppies were tonight!

One of our students just had an accident with her puppy, so we spent a good amount of time talking about clicker training tonight as a way she can keep her mind active and engaged while her body heals. She asked questions after she noted that Jedi was swinging back and forth between my left and right legs as I talked, so that led into a quick "how to" for how to start clicker training work. We'll see if any of them take it and run over the next week -- I hope they have fun stories to share of their progress.

We were able to get outside for part of the class, before the rain chased us back indoors. Jedi and Kaiser got passed off to the student without her puppy while I worked with another student's dog. Jedi wasn't too pleased about this at first and barked his disapproval, but he got over it when he realized I wasn't actually leaving. Funny, he will go away with anyone else, but I'm not allowed to leave him!

Jedi went into the crate with a pig ear for the advanced class and was a good boy while Kaiser was out doing his meet & greets. Both dogs got to come along when we went for a walk outside. One of the dogs in the class really struggles with small fluffy dogs, so Kaiser and Jedi were quite the distraction. Jedi was super well-behaved, though, and didn't do anything to provoke the other dog.

My dogs went back in the crate when we got back inside. Jedi barked a couple of times for attention. I backed my way over to the crate and rewarded him a couple of times for being quiet and then he went back to finishing off the pig ear. He stayed quiet for the rest of the night.

I didn't feed anyone dinner before I left home tonight, so I still needed to do that when we got home. Jedi finished his normal allotment during class when he was showing off his tricks, so he got a little extra when the other dogs ate. We tried for more leg pivots and were mostly successful, but he was a little all over the place tonight and having a hard time sticking to my leg. My guess is that he's just way overtired.