Day 65 - Class night (graduation)

Jedi's streak of getting to sleep out of the crate lasted two nights. Last night he ended up in the crate after he spent a good deal of time under my bed, but the real last straw when when I heard the "rip, rip" of him trying to pull the tag off Luke's bed. Yeah... No. Into the crate he went, which he was very happy to do once I convinced him to come out from under the bed. Unfortunately the return to the crate also brought with it a return of the barking this morning. We'll keep working on both.

Jedi has been in fine form today, acting like the 4-month old puppy that he most certainly is (well, tomorrow at least). He was absolutely wired from the get-go this morning. We worked on our heeling skills for breakfast and Jedi kept it focused and together for that. From there on out he had a pretty squirrely morning that consisted of much tugging with Kizzy, throwing most of the toys in the living room at me in an attempt to play, and jumping across my computer a time or two. We got quite a bit of rain this morning that kept us trapped inside, but thankfully Jedi finally crashed in time for my 10:00 meeting.

The rain let up before lunch, so we were able to go outside to eat today. We practiced a mixture of skills in that session today -- table downs, bottoms on the a-frame, heeling, and wait/stay. Jedi ran laps around the yard while I did the daily cleaning, and then I brought out tennis balls for everyone (but mostly for Jedi, who needed to run). I let him go until his tongue was hanging out, but Jedi surely would have liked to go much longer. Once he accepted the fact that we were in fact done he made a running dive into the pool and somehow managed to get his entire body under the water. I refilled the water bucket, so he got some hose time in as well.

All of this bought us some quiet time this afternoon, which lasted until about 3:30 or so. We went out a bit after 4:00 to chase frisbees, with the goal of taking the edge off before class tonight. I kept this session fairly short since it was his second of the day and I knew we had a long night ahead of us. Jedi made sure to get himself good and soaked before class (and no, it wasn't hot today).

Luke also got to come along to class tonight to serve as a new dog for the advanced class to meet as they prepare for their CGC test. I put Jedi and Luke in crates while I got things ready, but Luke didn't really fit very well in the crate so I let him out to just lay against the wall. Jedi didn't think that was very fair, and it was even less fair when the first puppy arrived and he was still in the crate. I wasn't going to let him out while he barked, so then we had to work through that and wait him out.

Jedi was obnoxious again during play time. We were missing several puppies again this week, so Jedi was once again hyper-focused on Massey. When separated each of them will play with other puppies, and will do so very appropriately -- but when given the chance to play together it just becomes a bit much. After several time outs we just got to work.

Jedi did well during the working portion of class, demonstrating the importance of building value into the release word as everyone works on building their dog's wait/stay skills. All went well for our walk outside as well, even with the distraction of a boy playing basketball, some people on bikes, various people, and a couple of dogs in the distance. Jedi let the other dogs play on the puppy obstacles when we got back, but he got his turn to play on the baby teeter to finish his dinner when everyone else left.

It was during the advanced class that Jedi was starting to come unglued from being overtired and overstimulated. I had put him back in the crate and he started barking when the next class came down the stairs. I covered the crate to block his view and he settled down fairly quickly. He stayed pretty quiet for the majority of class while we worked through a mock of the CGC test. We still had a bit of time to kill before the end of class, so we decided to take the dogs out to work them around the neighborhood.

Jedi started straight out of the gate with his leash biting/tugging behavior, which is pretty typical of how he gets in an overstimulated state (at least with the energy and duration that he was going at it tonight). We didn't get too far before we encountered a little white fluffy dog being walked across the street. I would say it's fairly out of character for Jedi to have such a reaction in this situation, but one of the dogs in class struggles with that type of dog and I think they were just feeding off each other. I finally resorted to picking Jedi up to be able to better redirect him and to stop making things worse for my student. He settled down immediately when I picked him up and was quite happy to be carried the next half a block. After that he was fine the rest of the walk.

Jedi had a minor meltdown when we got back downstairs, I think because I wouldn't let him play with the boxer. This was not helping the reactive dog in class, so I again scooped up Jedi and he spent the last few minutes of class in the van with Luke. His brain had pretty much fallen out of his ears and he needed a timeout. I could have tried to redirect him with toys, but that wouldn't have been helpful to my student or her dog, so to the van it was.

Since we finished dinner between classes, Jedi got a second dinner when the other dogs got their dinner after we got home. He got to just eat out of the bowl in his crate, as I figured his brain didn't need to work anymore today. The little dude must have been super over-tired, because he crashed fairly quickly, which is pretty out of character upon returning home from anywhere. I'm looking forward to our class at Canine Sports Zone tomorrow so that I can devote all of my attention to Jedi. While I think attending the classes I teach is an invaluable learning experience for Jedi, sometimes it's not ideal because I'm not able devote my full attention to him. That's definitely the best part about being a student on Tuesday nights!