Jedi stayed up on the bed for a good ten minutes last night when we went to bed. I think that's a record. Eventually, though, he jumped down and went into his crate. All was quiet and he stayed there at least until after I fell asleep. When I woke up this morning, though, he crawled out from under the bed when he started to sense movement. Stinker. Eventually he won't fit under there anymore, I guess.
I worked from home today, so we got to have a lazy morning. I took Jedi into the bedroom for breakfast and we worked on the bowl trick, but today I used a smaller bowl. Jedi did great generalizing the new target object. We did a bit of work with hugging the pole and then moved on to holding the leash in his mouth. His hold duration is improving quite nicely. Kaiser and Kizzy had a busy morning playing, but things quieted down by 9:00 or so.
For lunch today we finally did nails again. My Friday routine got thrown a bit off because two weeks ago we were at a trial and then last Friday it was so grossly hot outside that I didn't feel like sitting on the deck to do nails. Eek! Three weeks is too long to let puppy nails go -- they grow so fast! Jedi was a squirrely little monkey for his nail trimming today. His problem clearly is not with having his nails trimmed, it's with sitting still for more than a millisecond at a time. I persisted and I won. The first foot took a while, the second foot was a bit faster, and the last two were a breeze because he finally sat still.
We went out for some play time around 1:30 or so. I decided to do some cone work instead of just throwing balls for everyone, so I grabbed the cow tug out of the garage for Jedi to play with today. He was super excited to play today, which is awesome for how well he did with his cone games, but not so awesome for my hands that got in the way when he went for the tug. Obviously I have some blame in this for how I presented the toy. Jedi grazed the heel of my right hand fairly early on. It was bleeding, but not so bad that I felt we needed to stop. Later on I transferred the toy into my left hand to try to tighten up Jedi's turn around the cone -- This one was totally my fault because I stink at delivering the toy with my left hand. As a result Jedi missed big time and nailed the pointer finger on my left hand. I've got marks on both sides, it's a good one! At that point we had to quit so that I could go inside and clean up. Both hands in one day, that's a new one.
After work was done for the day I loaded everyone up to go for a hike on the bike trail. I figured it's been a while since we've gone out to collect ticks, and everyone needed to get out (poor Luke, always left at home). I decided to go to a trail access point between Bangor and Rockland. Because it's not near a major access point, I figured we'd be less likely to run into anyone out with their dog(s). I was right, we just saw a handful of bikers out enjoying the beautiful day.
Jedi is definitely getting more bold and adventurous. He followed Secret a lot more when she went exploring off-trail, and there were even times when he was out front leading the way. He continues to come when called, though, so good boy, Jedi. One of the reasons I chose this part of the trail is because there is a little creek that crosses under a bridge that we were always able to access from the trail. Unfortunately things have changed since I last visited this section -- There was a tree that had fallen and the little pathway was too overgrown for even the dogs to get down on their own. Bummer.
Never fear, though! These dogs have an internal tracking device when it comes to finding water. On the way back to the van everyone suddenly dove off the trail down into the ditch area. I started to reel in the Klee Kai figuring they were all chasing a bunny again or something (there were a LOT of bunnies today!), but then I heard the splashing and figured out what they were doing. It was pretty deep thanks to all of the rain we got the other day -- it appeared to go almost to the top of Kizzy's back. Jedi dunked his head and got thoroughly soaked. I let them spend quite a bit of time down there because they'd all been acting pretty warm prior to this (it was only 80). Jedi called up away from the water nicely, it was Kizzy that I couldn't get out of the water today. Of course, when Jedi realized she was still down there, he went running back down for more swimming. That probably happened four times before I finally got Kizzy to come back up. After that they were all refreshed and jazzed up for the rest of the walk back.
I was glad I'd filled the water jug in the van before we left, because even after their little swim the dogs all drank -- then Jedi tried to swim in the water dish. We ended up being out for an hour, so it was a nice little hike. So far I haven't pulled any ticks off anyone, but I haven't looked, either. I have to say, I'm sold on the NexGard that Jedi is on. I've never pulled a tick off him. The Seresto collars that the other dogs wear (because Kaiser can't do a topical) seem to work well, too, but they are a pain on trial weekends. Next year we'll have to look into doing the oral treatments for everyone.
I took Jedi outside for dinner to work on heeling since I haven't done any of this for a few days. The yappy neighbor dogs were yapping at the back fence and this was setting Jedi off. He'd bark and run halfway to the fence, and the yappy dogs would yap some more. Jedi would come back, hear the yapping, and bark/run again. This, of course, prompted the other dogs to eat as fast as they could so that they could come out and join the chorus. I paused with Jedi to get all of the dogs away from the fence and then we were able to finish up nicely.Jedi's been going a hundred miles an hour since dinner, playing with the girls, banking off the couch, etc. He's got the wild-eyed look tonight, so we'll see if he gets to be out of the crate tonight or not.
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