The Dog Tank & Otter Creek (6 months old!)

Jedi has officially survived the first six months of life! Today is his first "half birthday." Way to keep getting older, big guy. To celebrate, we did one of Jedi's favorite things -- we went and played at the Dog Tank. The place is getting crazy popular lately and earlier seems to be better, so we left home at 8:00 this morning to drive up to Menomonie. The place was completely empty when we arrived at ten to 10:00. We were soon joined by a pair with a golden retriever, but they deemed her to be "very reactive" and seemed willing to wait for their turn while I got to work both dogs.

Jedi went first in our rotation and had some pretty nice jumps today. I took advantage of the lack of people and made sure to correct him any time he broke his stay on the ramp. It doesn't happen often and he's doing really well overall, but reminders never hurt. Jedi's jumps were largely in the 14' - 15' range today. His best one was about 15'3" according to the owner who was watching. He biffed a couple in the 12' - 13' range by jumping really flat and leaving a little early. When that happened I went back to some short jumps where we focused on jumping UP. Behavior wise, Jedi continues to bark like a lunatic any time he's not on the dock. I'm still curious to see what happens when we are there for an entire weekend. We may have to crate around the corner of the building where Jedi can't see or hear anything.

We took a special field trip when we left the Dog Tank today. My friend was competing at a horse show at Otter Creek Farm up in Wheeler, which turns out to be only about 20 minutes away from the Dog Tank. I have always wanted to go watch her at an eventing show, so this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. She thought she'd be riding around noon and we arrived shortly before 11:30. I debated leaving the dogs in the van with all of the doors open (though it wasn't bad, only about 77 degrees when we arrived), but I decided to go ahead and bring them along -- largely so I wouldn't look like as big of an idiot while I wandered around trying to figure out where to go.

It occurred to me that I don't know if Secret has ever seen a horse before, at least up close. Both dogs actually did remarkably well! There were horses and riders milling about pretty much everywhere and Jedi didn't bark at all. We found the stadium jumping ring and stood there for a bit while I tried to get my bearings and figure out where the warm-up area was. We wandered that way (Jedi enjoying some horse poop on the way) and managed to find my friend on her horse. I kept a good 15' between us and Jedi did bark once or twice, but in general he did pretty awesome. We ended up standing next to the ring gate talking and waiting -- meanwhile several horses were walking right by us and Jedi didn't bark at any of them.

We went and sat up on a hill away from the ring to watch my friend's ride. When she was done we walked down by the horses to wait for the awards ceremony. Jedi barked a couple of times here, but it was one of his boredom barks and not directed at any of the horses. Afterwards we walked together with my friend and her horse on the way back to the van. Jedi was walking right next to the horse and not paying her any attention at all. He did think the horse poop was pretty groovy, though. From all of my years with having Luke around the barn I'm not phased by this in the least. So long as they don't roll in it, I say! We parted ways when we reached the van. The dogs had been so amazing during our time there that I didn't want to push it by taking them into the more crowded stabling area. This was a great experience for Jedi!

We had a very quiet afternoon. I went out to clean up the yard before dinner and Jedi really wanted to play. I decided we'd spend some time working on my throw for dock diving and let the dogs fetch it for me. I set up a couple of jump standards about 8' apart to mark the end of my "dock." Jedi thought this was a super fun game, although I couldn't for the life of me get him to run between the jump standards. He would circle way out around the far one, which didn't do much to help me with the timing of my throw, but he had fun. If nothing else it seemed to be a slightly safer way for him to play fetch versus his usual crash and burn method with other toys.