I finally got around to putting together some video for lesson 5 of our online puppy class with Silvia Trkman. We filmed breakfast, which was entirely cik/cap work around the cone in the basement. Jedi continues to make improvement to the right, but it's slow going compared to the progress of the left. I crammed in a quick session of heeling for lunch and got that on tape as well. I had a 1:00 meeting that I had to get back inside for, so Jedi had to wait a bit to play. Once that wrapped up we went back outside and I recorded a session of "stays with distractions." I still need to work more with these at home in front of tunnels and such, but for the purpose of the video I just danced around, threw the toy, and then tugged with Kizzy while Jedi held his stay. That was a new one for him and he did pretty great!
For our outing of the day I decided to take Jedi and Kaiser to the Concert in the Park. This is a local thing that they are doing pretty much every Wednesday over in Evans Bossard Park here in Sparta. There is a different band each week and they play for free in the park for two hours. They sell food as a fundraiser, so I figured why not go over to grab some dinner and sit in the park with the dogs for a bit with lots of stuff going on. I took Kaiser not because he enjoys being around people (ha....) but because I assumed that other people would have dogs there and he is the least reactive of the bunch (not including Luke). As it turned out, I was correct. It's hard to be a Klee Kai that doesn't want to be touched because everyone wants to pet the Klee Kai. Thankfully Jedi was more than willing to divert the attention to himself.
I could see that the park was completely full of cars when we drove by on the main road, so I elected to park over at Fishermen's Park and walk over. Since we were there, I thought maybe I'd take the edge off Jedi with a quick swim. I threw the bumper out into the water and at first he stared at it. I thought, oh great, we just lost a bumper. I guess he's always followed Secret out on other excursions. No worries, though, he figured it out. That behavior that I described the other day where Jedi would come almost to shore and then turn around to stare at Secret? Yeah, apparently it had nothing to do with Secret because he did it tonight, too. It's like he's waiting for the toy to go out again, but hey dummy, it's still in your mouth and you are 3' away from me still. This was somewhat problematic in that I was wearing tennis shoes and was not going to go into the water to get the toy, so we worked on me sitting there and waiting until Jedi figured out he had to bring it to me.
We didn't spend a lot of time at the lake because, frankly, I wanted dinner. Jedi probably got in 6-7 good tosses before I clipped on the leash and pulled him out of the water. I put his harness back on and we started the walk over to the park. Unlucky for me, the entire walk over to Evans Bossard Park is along the river, and Jedi had water on the brain. He spent almost the entire walk straining madly against the leash trying to get to the river. In addition to the fact that I just didn't think he NEEDED to swim anymore, that stretch of the river is laden with rocks and not good for swimming, so I kept us well back and up by the walkway.
Jedi's attention was diverted as we got closer to the area where the music was set up. There were kids running everywhere, loads of people in lawn chairs, and, sure enough, several dogs in attendance. I wrangled the dogs while I grabbed a sandwich and a bottle of water, and then we went to find a spot to sit in the grass to listen to the music while I ate. It was some country band playing tonight -- nobody I know, but apparently they are popular based on the size of the crowd! The dogs did well while I ate in their face. I pulled Jedi's Holee Roller out of the bag and let him play with that to keep him busy. A couple of people came over and were asking questions -- mostly about Kaiser, but Jedi was happy to jump all over them with his wet self.
Jedi did great around all the action, including completely ignoring the other dogs (even the one right behind him who started barking as we were talking to someone). He did a much better job at walking back to the van at the other park, but he definitely still noticed the river off to the side. I briefly considered letting him swim again before we went home, but he was drying off and I figured he'd live without it. Once home, dinner tonight was spent on the FitPaws donut in the basement, where Jedi was more or less insane and attempting to eat my entire hand (he was still a little high, I guess). Once again, it's almost 10:00 and he's still going strong -- but to his credit, he actually had a super quiet afternoon while I worked today. I think he actually napped!
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