Jedi is 5 months old today! My how time flies. I kind of forgot about it at first and didn't realize it was the 14th until sometime this afternoon. Thankfully I remembered in time to stop at Walmart to scavenge for some "birthday" picture supplies. I thought surely I'd be able to find something for a 5 year old and re-purpose it for Jedi's 5-months, but Walmart didn't appear to have any age-specific party supplies. We had to settle for buying a $1.50 package of cheap hats and then spending $4 on a Spiderman card for a 5 year old just so that I could harvest the "5" off it and glue it to the hat. :o) Before I went through the hassle of making the custom hat, I figured I'd try one on Jedi to see if he'd even let it stay on long enough for pictures. Surprisingly all was well, so we got it done. Good sport, Jedi.
This morning I introduced Jedi to a new trick. I decided to teach him to pack into a suitcase before he gets too big for my bigger suitcase. My suitcase has been sitting at the base of the stairs waiting to be put away forever, so it was handy and available. I taught Kizzy to do this one not that long ago, so I didn't figure Jedi would have too many problems with it. The first "issue" we encountered was that the little stinker wouldn't stay off the suitcase long enough for me to get it unzipped -- he just kept jumping on top of it while it was still closed. Once I finally got the darn thing opened there was no issue whatsoever getting Jedi to jump in. Couldn't keep him out, really. I started to wait him out to see if he would lay down, but he got increasingly frustrated and was offering every behavior under the sun inside the suitcase (including spin, pretty, wave, etc.). I finally rested my hand just inside the suitcase and he figured out what I wanted. I tried to move too fast with a partially closed lid and he just jumped on top of it, so I will need to back up and work on the auto down a bit more to keep his focus lower and build the value for that position.
I got home a little before 2:00 today and opted to skip Jedi's lunch because of class tonight. He had a surprisingly quiet afternoon, but I knew that was going to bite me in the butt come class tonight. For that reason, I decided to pack Jedi along when I had to run to Bangor to get my hair cut around 5:00. It was only 73 degrees and overcast, so I knew that he'd be fine in the van for the 15-20 minutes that it would take for me to get done. We went down to the park when I was done and I took Jedi over to the big open field next to the "skate park" to chase frisbees. There was quite a bit of activity in the park between a kid's baseball game and some people shooting guns at the shooting range. Jedi didn't notice any of it.
I had two frisbees and was working on getting Jedi to switch between the two. He'll need more work on this. I settled for rewarding him with the one he wanted (his little one) if he would bite at the big one when offered. Jedi was not very graceful tonight and kept somersaulting while going after the frisbees. I started throwing them up the little knoll as running up hill seemed to at least slow him down a bit on the approach. After 10 minutes he stopped bringing the discs back right away, so I figured that was enough. I let Jedi go jump in the creek quick before we left, but he seemed more interested in the plastic in my hand. He tried to convince me that he wasn't hot or tired and could we please play more, but we packed up and went home at that point. This was when I made my stop at Walmart and we did pictures before we left for class tonight.
We had a fun group tonight. We had a new puppy who didn't make it the first week, so everyone had fun meeting him. The ones who showed up tonight are the hard players so there was some rough and tumble play for about 10 minutes and everyone was panting by the time we got going in class. Jedi went into the crate so that I could work on greeting manners with the other puppies, and he managed to be a good boy and stay quiet.
Next we worked on being able to take stuff away from our puppies and Jedi was a terrible demo dog because he didn't want the pig ear again so I had nothing to take away from him. I think he was too concerned about what the other puppies had and if they were going to try to take his pile of stuff that he wasn't touching.We had a couple more issues tonight where the lab puppy got into Jedi's space while he was working and Jedi got reactive -- Nothing nearly as bad as Monday night, but still unacceptable behavior. Granted, the puppy was rude, but still. Because it was so nice outside we got to take everyone for a walk around the block. Jedi was a star for me but I did briefly hand him over to a student while I showed her something with her dog and he was pulling with her. Go figure.
One big breakthrough tonight was when I was explaining/showing crate games to everyone. While Jedi has always been good about demoing the wait and release at the open door, he has been terrible about self-loading into the crate. Not tonight! Something must have clicked because he started offering to go in on his own. He got big treats for that. Jedi went through all of his dinner and quite a few hot dogs tonight. I fed the other dogs before we left, so there was no "second dinner" when we got home. There was some running around outside, but Jedi is actually laying on the couch next to me right now and we've been home less than an hour. It's a miracle!
Jedi is 5 months old today! My how time flies. I kind of forgot about it at first and didn't realize it was the 14th until sometime this afternoon. Thankfully I remembered in time to stop at Walmart to scavenge for some "birthday" picture supplies. I thought surely I'd be able to find something for a 5 year old and re-purpose it for Jedi's 5-months, but Walmart didn't appear to have any age-specific party supplies. We had to settle for buying a $1.50 package of cheap hats and then spending $4 on a Spiderman card for a 5 year old just so that I could harvest the "5" off it and glue it to the hat. :o) Before I went through the hassle of making the custom hat, I figured I'd try one on Jedi to see if he'd even let it stay on long enough for pictures. Surprisingly all was well, so we got it done. Good sport, Jedi.
This morning I introduced Jedi to a new trick. I decided to teach him to pack into a suitcase before he gets too big for my bigger suitcase. My suitcase has been sitting at the base of the stairs waiting to be put away forever, so it was handy and available. I taught Kizzy to do this one not that long ago, so I didn't figure Jedi would have too many problems with it. The first "issue" we encountered was that the little stinker wouldn't stay off the suitcase long enough for me to get it unzipped -- he just kept jumping on top of it while it was still closed. Once I finally got the darn thing opened there was no issue whatsoever getting Jedi to jump in. Couldn't keep him out, really. I started to wait him out to see if he would lay down, but he got increasingly frustrated and was offering every behavior under the sun inside the suitcase (including spin, pretty, wave, etc.). I finally rested my hand just inside the suitcase and he figured out what I wanted. I tried to move too fast with a partially closed lid and he just jumped on top of it, so I will need to back up and work on the auto down a bit more to keep his focus lower and build the value for that position.
I got home a little before 2:00 today and opted to skip Jedi's lunch because of class tonight. He had a surprisingly quiet afternoon, but I knew that was going to bite me in the butt come class tonight. For that reason, I decided to pack Jedi along when I had to run to Bangor to get my hair cut around 5:00. It was only 73 degrees and overcast, so I knew that he'd be fine in the van for the 15-20 minutes that it would take for me to get done. We went down to the park when I was done and I took Jedi over to the big open field next to the "skate park" to chase frisbees. There was quite a bit of activity in the park between a kid's baseball game and some people shooting guns at the shooting range. Jedi didn't notice any of it.
I had two frisbees and was working on getting Jedi to switch between the two. He'll need more work on this. I settled for rewarding him with the one he wanted (his little one) if he would bite at the big one when offered. Jedi was not very graceful tonight and kept somersaulting while going after the frisbees. I started throwing them up the little knoll as running up hill seemed to at least slow him down a bit on the approach. After 10 minutes he stopped bringing the discs back right away, so I figured that was enough. I let Jedi go jump in the creek quick before we left, but he seemed more interested in the plastic in my hand. He tried to convince me that he wasn't hot or tired and could we please play more, but we packed up and went home at that point. This was when I made my stop at Walmart and we did pictures before we left for class tonight.
We had a fun group tonight. We had a new puppy who didn't make it the first week, so everyone had fun meeting him. The ones who showed up tonight are the hard players so there was some rough and tumble play for about 10 minutes and everyone was panting by the time we got going in class. Jedi went into the crate so that I could work on greeting manners with the other puppies, and he managed to be a good boy and stay quiet.
Next we worked on being able to take stuff away from our puppies and Jedi was a terrible demo dog because he didn't want the pig ear again so I had nothing to take away from him. I think he was too concerned about what the other puppies had and if they were going to try to take his pile of stuff that he wasn't touching.We had a couple more issues tonight where the lab puppy got into Jedi's space while he was working and Jedi got reactive -- Nothing nearly as bad as Monday night, but still unacceptable behavior. Granted, the puppy was rude, but still. Because it was so nice outside we got to take everyone for a walk around the block. Jedi was a star for me but I did briefly hand him over to a student while I showed her something with her dog and he was pulling with her. Go figure.
One big breakthrough tonight was when I was explaining/showing crate games to everyone. While Jedi has always been good about demoing the wait and release at the open door, he has been terrible about self-loading into the crate. Not tonight! Something must have clicked because he started offering to go in on his own. He got big treats for that. Jedi went through all of his dinner and quite a few hot dogs tonight. I fed the other dogs before we left, so there was no "second dinner" when we got home. There was some running around outside, but Jedi is actually laying on the couch next to me right now and we've been home less than an hour. It's a miracle!
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