Day 45 - Agility Class (week 1)

Tonight Jedi and I had our first night of agility foundations class at Canine Sports Zone! This is the first group class I've been a participant in (versus teaching) for eight years! Crazy. Not only that, but it's a two-hour drive each way. Yup, I'm crazy. That said, Kaiser, Secret, and Kizzy were all trained exclusively at home and all three struggled when they started trialing (despite going to trials all of the time). Because of this, I am going to make an active effort to work Jedi around other working dogs as much as I possibly can.

Jedi was a bit of a cranky-pants again at breakfast. I swear, if I give up and go to feeding one meal out of a bowl it's going to be breakfast. I don't know if he's just not a morning dog or what, but it takes him a while to turn on in the morning. Maybe we just need to drop pivots in the morning and do stuff he thinks is "fun." This morning I tried to start with full pivots on the balance disc and it took about five minutes (I timed it) before he decided to interact with me. Once he offered a couple of circles (he only seems to go right now) I quit and we moved on to stuff he finds more fun.

When I got home from work I logged on before getting Jedi's lunch and I ended up getting sucked into a call. This meant lunch was delayed, but strangely Jedi just immediately crashed on the couch. Granted, my house is 80 degrees because I'm too cheap to run the air conditioning, so all of the dogs are fairly inactive right now. Once my call was done I took Jedi down into the basement where it was cooler. We did just a very brief session of pivot to the leg and then went and spent the rest of his lunch on the treadmill. We went up to 1.8 mph today!

I skipped playtime after lunch today because of Jedi's class this evening. Nobody seemed terribly bothered by this and they slept most of the afternoon.

We left for Middleton a little after 4:00. I suppose the nice part about having a two-hour drive is that even if Jedi runs around like a loon all day, at least he'll get a nap in before class. He was a nice quiet traveler like usual, but when we got to Canine Sports Zone he was ready to go! Apparently he already equates the facility with fun stuff, because he was dragging me to the door and had to be reminded to go potty.

Not surprisingly, Jedi is the youngest dog in the class. I think the next youngest is the 5-month old German Shepherd puppy, but the majority of the class is around a year or less. There are six dogs total with two instructors and an assistant, so I can definitely appreciate the amount of hands-on instruction available!

I like how the class is structured. I've never taken a true foundations class before, as when I started with Luke it was very much a "get on the equipment" beginners class. This class is covering important things like hind end awareness, relationship building, playing, building drive, etc. Tonight started with an intro to the clicker. While everyone else was working on loading the clicker, I had Jedi target the food lid and then we did some leg pivots. I was expecting Jedi to be a bit distracted by all of the clickers going off around him, but he didn't seem to notice them at all.

After this intro they split us into two groups of three. Jedi's group worked on shaping exercises first. They had balance discs that they wanted the dog to interact with. Jedi did some full pivots on his, then I had him back on to the fully inflated disc for some extra challenge. Yes, we did let everyone know that Jedi has been doing these exercises for several weeks now.

When we switched sides we were introduced to a chute barrel. We were asked to shape it at first -- I'm not huge on using the clicker for actual agility objects, but whatever. Jedi went straight to it and I threw some hotdogs after him. Ho-hum, he just doesn't care much for food. After that the instructor held the dogs while we called them through. It took Jedi a moment to figure out he had to go through the barrel to get to me, but once we got him straightened out he was fine. After that I determined it was easiest if I just did a collar grab to aim him at the entrance. When I released him he ran straight through to his thrown toy on the other side.

Our groups switched sides again and this time we were given the little raised planks to work on. I think they were just working on walking back and forth across them, but I used the opportunity to work on Jedi's bottom while crossing (vs backing onto the plank). He did super well, so I started to work on adding speed. He can hold on to the bottom pretty well on my right side. It's a bit tougher on the left (he overshoots and wants to back on). I started with food but moved to a toy when Jedi was fixating on our neighbor's toy and left me twice to go try to join their party.

On that subject, I learned tonight that Jedi likes squeaky toys. Really likes them. I got to thinking and I don't really have many toys around here that squeak, mostly because they seem to instantly die. My food stuffable tug toys have squeakers in them, so maybe I'll throw one of them into the bag for next week. I could keep Jedi's attention if I had a toy, but the squeaker trumped food by far (even hotdogs). I rotated through toys often tonight to keep things fresh and interesting. I don't want to turn this into a game of "I won't work for that toy, I want a different one" (I have pandered to both Secret and Kizzy in this regard) -- but I don't think I have to worry about that. I wasn't swapping toys because Jedi wasn't interested in them, and he was always happy to take whatever was in front of him.

We swapped sides one more time and this time our group was introduced to a tunnel. I was a little surprised to see that the tunnel was expanded to its full length of 15' -- and it was a dark tunnel, to boot. Usually when I introduce tunnels for the first time I keep it scrunched up short. Nobody seemed to have any problems with it, and they did shorten it some for the one dog who was a little less confident. Jedi went in immediately, but came back out the entrance when I threw the toy. I cheated and threw the toy through the tunnel and of course then he went all the way through. After that all I needed to do was a collar grab and he would bolt through when released (toy thrown to the other end). I appreciated the reminder to work from both sides. I'm always terrible about doing that, especially when it forces me to throw the toy with my left hand.

The class ended with restrained recalls. Heck, I'll drive two hours just to have someone hold my dog for restrained recalls! Jedi got to go first since he knows the drill and could show everyone the purpose behind the exercise. He sure does love playing this game. I was happily surprised at how well he did as the rest of the class went through their recalls. He screams bloody murder when we do them in the classes I teach, so I assumed he'd get similarly amped up in this environment. I kept him busy with the toy, though, and he was pretty good. We had just enough time to let everyone get in a second recall. The instructors got a kick out of Jedi and said they could see his eyes bug out from being so wired. Hey, at least he wasn't screaming. Well, other than when we entered the ring for his second turn.

We got a homework handout which didn't have anything new for us with the exception of introducing the dog to going under something like a sheet or shower curtain. It sounds like next week they will start letting out the chute fabric. I suppose I could drag my chute out of the garage and play this weekend, but then again there is something nice about having help through these introductions. Now that Jedi appears to have figured out the tunnel, I suppose I should get those out as well.

I think this is going to be a fun class and it will be a great learning experience for both Jedi and myself. Look, I already learned something -- that Jedi can't focus around squeaker toys! Something to work on!

Other than grumbling when he ran out of water (still need to get a bigger water dish for that crate), the ride home was pretty quiet. When you think of it, that's a pretty exhausting hour for a puppy -- at least a puppy like Jedi who plays the entire time. When we got home we fed the rest of the dogs and Jedi quickly worked through what was left of his dinner. (We got home at 9:20, so that's not terrible.) He's been running around like a loon for the last two hours now. I can't blame him, it's a lot cooler/nicer out now -- and he appears to be having fun eating the ice that was dumped out of the cooler.

Day 44 - Class night

This morning Jedi had one of his cranky-pants moments during his breakfast training session. I'm going to attribute it to him being overly tired, but he threw one of his "don't wanna, don't hafta" fits. All I wanted him to do was give me a frog stretch -- which, I'll admit, I haven't been maintaining/asking him to do with any frequency -- but still. He would lay down when asked, then immediately offer a roll over. Over, and over, and over. And when that didn't net the response he wanted he would get up and go over to offer 4-in in the metal baking dish (my training room is still piled with stuff). If that didn't work he'd start to offer any behavior he could think of. Finally, after what seemed like forever, he offered the slightest stretch in his hind legs while he was down. Once I clicked that he was like, "Oh, that's what you want?" Then he was fine. We progressed to putting objects other than the spoon into the bowl. Jedi had no problem generalizing this for either the little plastic lid or the lid's container.

Jedi (and Secret, who snuck out the door) rode with this morning to drop Wes & Lexie off at the boarding facility where they will be staying this week. I told them it wasn't going to be an exciting ride, but they insisted on coming. It was probably good to take Jedi somewhere that he didn't get to come out and do something fun. He's getting sassier than ever about expecting to get out of the van and have a party when we stop.

When we got home we proceeded to have the quietest day since Jedi's arrival. All five dogs were completely exhausted from "entertaining" our visitors for the weekend. I kind of feel bad for Wes & Lexie, knowing that they are probably just as beat and they were getting tossed into daycare where they were probably going to go nuts all day. Oh well, they'll sleep well tonight.

Nobody in my house moved until I got up to work Jedi through his lunch at 12:30. It was another warm day, so I elected to go down to the basement for our training session. We did some pivots to the leg and then spent some time backing up the stairs. Jedi is getting faster at this skill and can do three stairs pretty quickly. We finished by putting more stuff in the big bowl. When I only had enough of his food left that I could fit it in one hand I offered him the empty bowl and asked him to put it into the bigger one. I'm assuming it's because he's not allowed to touch the dish when there is food in it, but he wanted nothing to do with picking up the smaller food bowl.

We went outside to play ball after lunch to help ensure a quiet afternoon filled with sleeping before class tonight (hey, one can always hope). I dumped out and refilled the pools when we were done because everyone was hot and I figured it would be appreciated. Jedi was a loon.

He must have gotten his ya-yas out at lunch because we did have another quiet afternoon. Never fear, though -- all of that sleeping recharged his batteries and he was ready to go a million miles per hour for class tonight. I had to give Jedi several timeouts during playtime because he is being an absolute bully to Massey, the puppy of similar size and age to him. Granted, most of it is just vocalization and the other puppy keeps coming back for more, but Jedi is getting too aroused with that particular puppy and needs to be redirected. The good thing is that he will always redirect to toys, and if I can get him to pay attention to the other puppies he will play with them.

In our puppy class tonight we spent a bit of time talking about grooming and Jedi was a good demo dogs while we talked about nails (I didn't trim any of his since we just did it on Friday). We also talked about the first steps of stay/wait and he did a good job with that as well, although he was a bit sassy when I was talking to the class and not paying attention to him. As usual, Jedi loved the restrained recall portion of class, but he did lose his mind a bit when a student borrowed his favorite tail toy for their own recall. We finished class by pulling out the puppy obstacles (little bridge, little teeter, etc.). I kept Jedi off of everything to let the students play, but after class was done I let him explore everything. No surprise, he had no problem with any of it and offered a nice bottom on both the bridge and the teeter.

Jedi was a rock star during the adult dog class. We packed everyone up and went for a walk down to Vet's Park to let them work around different distractions and in a big open area. Jedi got to serve as a distraction during stays and also got to play the part of a trained dog during meet and greets.  :o)  I kept hot dogs in his face to make sure he didn't jump on anyone, but he was actually showing amazing restraint all on his own. When we got back to the building I put Jedi in a crate for the remainder of class. He was so tired by this point that he just crashed and didn't make a peep for the rest of the night.

Of course, that all goes out the window as soon as we get home and he can start going nuts playing with Kizzy. Speaking of Kizzy, I just witnessed proof at how much Jedi has grown -- Kizzy can't really hump on him anymore!  lol....

Day 43 - Copeland Park (14 weeks old!)

Jedi is 14 weeks old today! My parents remarked how much bigger he had gotten when they dropped their dogs off on Friday. While I see him every day and the change is not as immediately noticeable, I can tell he's been growing a lot lately. I suppose he's getting to the point where I could probably start tracking height along with weight, but then again, it's not like I can stop anything from happening. As I learned with Secret, he'll get as big as he gets. But those ears, they are still up!

We were up at 7:00 this morning because Jedi was starting to get restless in his crate. I can't really blame him, we went to bed just after 10:00 so that's a long time for him. Were it not for our guests I might have tried to go back to bed, but I figured it was easiest just to get up and get everyone fed. Jedi worked on pivots around the balance disc (still propped on the paw pods for added difficultly), pivots to the leg, and then we worked on targeting with the right paw. I switched everything around in my hand so that my left hand was presenting the target and clicker, and my right hand had the food. This made all the difference in the world and Jedi seemed to finally understand. He's definitely not as coordinated in offering his right paw, but he's trying hard and he'll get there.

I've been needing to mow the lawn pretty much this entire last week and couldn't put it off any longer. I went out and got started around 10:00 since I knew it was going to be a warm one today. Jedi continues to do better with the lawn mower each time. Today he elected to hang out under the a-frame with Luke for pretty much the entire duration. When I had to move the a-frame out of the  middle of the yard he ended up retreating under the deck with a few of the other dogs who were avoiding the sun.

After the lawn was mowed I filled up the pools again. Jedi continues to grow fonder of the hose every time it comes out, although today it was Wes that he was competing with as we filled the pools. Jedi got plenty of hose time in for himself, though, and managed to get himself good and wet. Then he rolled around in the fresh cut grass. Wet puppies and cut grass don't mix very well -- or should I say, they mix too well. It's a good thing I plain old don't care if my dogs are "clean" or not. The dirt falls off them eventually.

Blessedly, there was much napping this afternoon. So much so that I actually managed to miss Jedi's lunch. Oops! I realized around 3:00 that I'd completely failed to feed him, so we went down to the basement together and worked on his wait/stay. One of the requirements for the class we start this week is that the dog have a "developing sit/stay," so, well, I figured I should work on it. We did a bit more targeting and ended with some spoon/bowl since he likes that one so much. We are probably at the point where I should start to vary the objects to generalize the skill a bit more.

For our outing of the day I decided to pack up Jedi and Secret to go hit up Copeland Park in La Crosse. There was quite a bit going on there for a Sunday afternoon! I parked all the way down at the end, so we started there and walked the perimeter of the park. There were a bunch of people meeting for some event under the shelter, with several of them out playing frisbee and football in the nearby grass. The dogs didn't really take notice of them at all.

We stopped to visit the water play area on the way by. It's a fun little cement area where water randomly shoots out of various fountains for various durations. I thought for sure Jedi would go nuts over this, but he didn't really show it any interest at all. That might be because he found part of a leftover sandwich in the grass. I was not successful at getting it out of his mouth before it disappeared.

I didn't have much better success at getting the dogs to pose on some landscaping next to the baseball field. Nobody wants to pose when it's hot outside (we got up to about 86, I think). As we approached the water side of the park I noticed a little path down to the river, so I let the dogs go down there and explore/cool off. They both went in the water but were then more interested in searching through the tall grass to find whatever nasties people had left behind, so we got out of there.

I stayed off the playground equipment since there were people around. Most of the people were over by the water area by this time, though. Jedi was super interested in all of the running and screaming -- I probably should have just hung out there for a bit until they got boring. He was fine -- not reactive or anything, just very curious. He was also pretty interested in the game of basketball going on, and I did let him watch that for a bit as he tried to figure out what was going on.

There was a grassy area just past the basketball/tennis courts, so I got out the frisbees and let the dogs chase some plastic for a bit. Someone went walking by with a dog while we were playing so I opted on the side of safety and hooked Jedi up to the long line. That's silly, really, because he is 150% focused on the toy when he's playing. I think an elephant could walk by and he wouldn't notice.

We had played in the shade to keep things as cool as possible, but both dogs had their tongues hanging out at the end. I had water in the van, but both dogs were a bit obsessed with the river in front of us as we made our way back. I saw a path down to the little beach area, so I relented and let the dogs go down to the water. Both of them immediately went in, and since Secret ended up going in up past her chest this meant that Jedi was going to go for a full-on swim. He went out a few more times and seemed to thoroughly enjoy himself.

When we got home I noted that the rechargeable battery for my weed trimmer was charged, so I took it out to clean up around the dog walk and to whack down the jungle in the dog pen. Jedi was NOT a fan of the weed trimmer at all. First he ran all the way around the yard and then he ended up high-tailing it into the house through the dog door. It's always interesting to see his reaction to stuff he finds scary, since overall he is such a confident puppy.

For dinner tonight we attempted more pivots to the leg, but Jedi lost interest in those pretty quickly (he gets sassy when he's tired). We finished with more paw targets. I moved the target back and forth between hands and he seems to understand that he needs to reach with the paw closest to the hand holding the target. Another session or two and we should probably see what happens if I try to get him to cross his paws with the right paw instead of the left.

Day 42 - Canine Sports Zone Run-Throughs

We didn't get to have a lazy Saturday morning, but our house guests are not to blame. Everyone was actually nice and quiet until the alarm went off this morning. It wasn't a trial day, but I saw on Facebook that Canine Sports Zone was offering run-throughs at 10:30. With Kizzy's recently resurfaced teeter issue, I figured we'd take any ring time we can get.

Feeding seven dogs is a little insane, but we have a system (basically it's business as usual with the visitors in the x-pen to stay out of the way). We worked on more pivots and pivots to the leg during breakfast. We also worked on sit pretty and spent some time trying to get Jedi to use his right paw to touch the target. Silvia suggested to work it from a sit and hold the target way far off to that side so that he practically has no choice. I think part of my problem is that I'm holding the target in my right hand and crossing his body with it. This is due to the mechanics of holding the target and clicker together, and holding the food in my left hand. It would probably help if I would switch this around. Jedi is doing better about offering the other paw, but it's always kind of a "two for one" deal because he always does the left first, then the right.

We hit the road at 8:00. Have I mentioned lately how thankful I am for Jedi being such a good little traveler? He is getting a little sassy when we stop and will bark a couple of times because he thinks surely it is time to get out to play, but it's brief and he doesn't keep it up if I don't get any dogs out. Once we get moving again he crashes and goes back to sleep.

We got to Canine Sports Zone at 10:00, so I had plenty of time to get everyone out to go potty. Jedi even got to come in before the runs started and we played some crate games and did some restrained toy retrieves. I introduced a fun fur ring toy that I bought the weekend I picked Jedi up and he thought that was pretty cool.

I put Jedi back in the van for the first set of turns, but I brought him in with Secret for her second go. I figure with summer coming we aren't going to be able to continue living out of the van, so he's going to have to be introduced to the idea of crating around all the hubbub of a trial. He was fine, until I took Secret into the ring to run. Oh the screaming! Secret actually stopped running and was looking around trying to figure out what was going on and who was trying to kill her puppy. I attempted to work through part of Jedi's lunch before taking them back out to the van, but he'd gotten himself so worked up that he wasn't that interested in food (he likely wanted to go out and drink a gallon of water, knowing him).

I had time to take Kizzy back outside before running Kaiser the second time, so I elected to bring Jedi back in with me to sit in the crate for Kaiser's turn. I did a brief pivot session with him before I had to get Kaiser out of the crate and he did well; his brain had come back. Jedi did worlds better during Kaiser's run. I heard him a couple of times, but it was absolutely nothing like how he'd carried on during Secret's runs. It will be interesting to see how he does next weekend, as I'm planning to crate inside at the NADAC trial. That crating area should be far enough away from the ring that he doesn't get so worked up.

After Kaiser was done with his turn I took him back out to the van and then brought Jedi back in to work through the rest of his lunch. We did more pivots, played on the balance disc that was sitting out, and when and did some bottoms on the raised plank that was sitting up by the ring. Jedi got to meet a bunch of new people, including the people who will be teaching the agility foundations class that we start on Tuesday. We're going to have so much fun with that! After lunch was gone I grabbed the long furry tail and we ran a couple of laps around the big ring. I really need to put more work into Jedi's wait so that I can get ahead of him a bit. We have less of a "chase the toy" and end up more with a "hold the toy as he runs alongside me."

It was a quiet ride home, which was long enough for Jedi to recharge his batteries. He might have gotten in a short nap this afternoon, but for the most part he's been going nonstop. There are too many dogs here to play with -- When one of them gets tired, he just moves on to the next one. I think he's been outside pretty much all day. I've closed the gate to the big yard to at least limit the trouble they can get into -- like the pools. He was absolutely soaked again one of the times I went out to check on him this afternoon. I thought puppies needed to sleep? Apparently not this one! We worked for dinner on the treadmill tonight since we haven't touched it for weeks. Jedi had no problems starting right where he left off and we made it up to 1.5 mph tonight.

Day 41 - Blyton Veteran's Park (Sparta)

Work at home days are the best days! We got off to a leisurely start this morning and didn't bother getting out of bed until almost 7:00. For breakfast training we did more pivots to the leg (biggest challenge, not getting dizzy as we do more circles), spoon/bowl, and sit pretty. We need to work on getting a more square sit for that, but Jedi is exceptionally lazy in the morning.

I had dumped the pools out because I need to mow (but also because they were looking gross), but today I ended up filling them up again. When my 11:00 meeting got canceled I took the opportunity to take the dogs out for a quick game of fetch. I knew Jedi would be his usual hot self after this, so instead of having him go bucket swimming again I figured I'd just fill up the pools for him.

Jedi is turning on to the hose and discovering how fun it is. Earlier in the morning I hosed off the tarp that was in the puppy pen and Jedi thought that was pretty cool. While the pools filled he had fun snapping at the water when I held the hose. If I didn't hold the hose Secret continued to pull it out and she got Jedi right in the face a couple of times. lol

Jedi's lunch was spent on nails. I've been good about doing them on Fridays, but I missed last week for some reason (was it raining?). It is remarkable how much a puppy's nails grow in a week! Jedi was a good boy, but I did take one nail back a little short (it didn't bleed, but it was right up there). Hopefully he doesn't hold that against me.

It was a quiet afternoon full of napping dogs, which is probably good because everything went crazy around 4:00 when my parents dropped off their dogs. Yes, we have seven dogs here for the weekend. Jedi thinks it's awesome to have more playmates. Lexie went a little nuts running laps across the yard when they first arrived and Jedi thought it was great fun to chase her.

Because he'd already been running around for nearly two hours, I didn't think we needed to do anything too crazy for our outing of the day. I ended up taking Jedi and Secret over to Blyton Park here in Sparta. It's a small park, covering about a block, so we walked the neighborhood surrounding the park first. We wandered the park on the way back to the van to get some pictures. There were kids on the playground equipment, so we couldn't get our usual shot. They had a lot of really neat memorials, though, and I got a good picture of Jedi on a neat bench.

For dinner we did more pivots to the leg outside. I spent the last half of his food over on the teeter playing "slam," since we haven't done that for a couple of days. I still haven't raised the plank at all, mostly because it's already a jump for him. As he gets more enthusiastic it gets harder for him to nail his bottom, so there is plenty to continue to work on at this height.

I have more pictures than words today, so here are the leftovers.  :o)

Day 40 - Exploring Rockland

During our training session this morning we worked on pivot to the leg using the lid to a tupperware container that was in the basement. It took Jedi a moment to generalize what we were doing to this new object, but then he was golden and figured out what we were doing. We also did some full pivots on the balance disc sitting on top of the paw pods to add some difficultly. This was the first time we've done that and the additional  movement definitely made this more challenging for Jedi. We finished up with some work on backing up the stairs -- Jedi can go three steps now. You can see that this maneuver takes quite a bit of core strength.

I had another 1:00 meeting today, which meant we needed another fairly quick training session for lunch when I got home from work. I opted to go outside and sit next to the table, this time rewarding for hind leg raises. I picked this object because I thought it would be a little too high for Jedi to do a full "bottom" on, but he's pretty good at hefting his butt in the air. I had to click early to catch just the leg lifts. Silvia has alluded to the fact that the pee trick will be in our next lesson. Jedi offered the hind leg lift early on when backing onto objects, but he has gotten too quick about lifting both back feet up to catch it with any regularity on a normal object now. Oddly enough it was always the left rear leg before, and now he appears to be focusing on the right.

We went out to play after my meeting wrapped up. It's been a while since everyone got to play frisbee, so we went with that today. Kizzy stole Jedi's little plastic frisbee, so I just switched him over to the little fabric one that I'd originally given to Kizzy. It doesn't roll well (at least in my tall grass that needs mowing), but he was happy to chase it if I threw it, too. No worries about him jumping up and catching anything yet -- Jedi hasn't quite made the connection between the eyes and mouth yet, if his reaction to tossing food towards him is any indication. He did manage to sink another tooth into my finger right at the edge of the nail for a nice bleeder, but again, that was totally my fault.

I dumped the pools out today in preparation of the mowing that needs to happen sometime in the next couple of days. I probably should have waited until after we'd played, because without the pools to jump into Jedi found the next best thing. I was answering an email this afternoon when I heard him making the most peculiar noises. The other dogs were in the house with me, so I knew he wasn't playing with one of them. I got up to see what he was doing and soon after he exploded into the house absolutely dripping wet -- from his head, at least. Best I can figure he dunked his entire head into the water bucket outside. He didn't tip it over or anything, it was still at least 3/4 full. He was pretty proud of himself for it. After rolling around like a loon for a few minutes he crashed on the couch for pretty much the rest of the afternoon.

For our outing of the day I packed up Jedi, Kaiser, and Kizzy and we ended up going to Rockland. Originally my intention was to go to West Salem for a softball game that I found posted online, but after I was on the road I realized that I'd forgotten to throw leashes (other than Jedi's) in the van and all I had was flexi leashes. I didn't want to go to a public place full of people with flexi leashes -- even if they are locked, I'm just not a proponent of them in public places. I'd also considered just driving to Rockland to go for a walk, so that's what we ended up doing.

I parked at Gaylord park and we walked around the housing division next to it. We encountered another off leash dog today. It was a yellow lab and his human was out front, which might be even more annoying because the guy did absolutely nothing to stop the dog. The dog was coming at us with his hackles up from his ears to his tail. I was walking backwards away from him with my dogs and telling him to get, and still the guy does nothing. I finally started to use my foot to push the dog away and finally the guy comes over and says something stupid like, "He's not my dog so he doesn't really listen to me." Well that's nice -- The dog didn't even have a collar on. If he doesn't listen, you might want to do something about that.

We made our way over to the part of town where I used to live. As we neared my grandpa's house I saw he was outside watering his lawn, so we stopped in and surprised him with a visit. We ended up staying there for about an hour! My grandpa really likes Jedi and the feeling was mutual. Jedi also liked playing with his hose, which he doesn't really get to do here because Secret completely monopolizes it. Considering how long we hung out in my grandpa's driveway, all three dogs did really well. Jedi got bored a couple of times and entertained himself by tugging on his leash or rolling in the wet grass.

By the time we got back to the van we'd been out nearly two hours! This probably explains why the dogs weren't too enthusiastic about posing for a group picture. Before we got back into the van we ran into a couple of girls at the park who asked if they could pet the dogs. Earlier we'd met a nice little boy who asked to the pet them as well, so Jedi got to meet a handful of new people today.

Because it was close to 8:00 by the time we got home, I was looking for a relatively quick and easy training session for dinner. I elected to just do another set of leg lifts at the table. I might need to find something taller, though, because the little stinker is going into more of a handstand already.

Ear update -- They're still up!

Day 39 - Sparta High School

Jedi's braces have been in for a full week and were starting to look a big raggedy, so today I decided to take them out. The Uni-Solve wipes that I picked up at the pharmacy the other day worked really well! Jedi was a good boy and sat quietly while I just continued to rub the wipes back and forth to free the glue from his ears. I think the smell bothered him, but he was a trooper.

His ears continue to stand gloriously tall without the braces! I'm under no delusion that they will not need to be braced again as he continues to teeth. It's quite likely, I'm sure -- but I'm electing not to brace while I don't have to, so we'll see what these babies do over the next few days. It would just figure, though, that I would buy all of the supplies and then end up only using them once.

This morning I switched to a small plate for our leg pivots. Jedi didn't appear to notice a difference. We also did leg crosses and sit pretty with target touches. We ended with spoon/bowl -- this morning I upped the difficulty by moving the bowl away from me. This did cause some confusion at first, but Jedi figured it out.

Before I had to leave for the office this morning, we were outside wandering around when I looked over and saw Jedi starting to climb up and investigate the a-frame (he appeared to be licking the moisture off it). Uh, no buddy. Not yet. I chuckled, though, when he did a "bottom" unprompted on his own. He likes putting his back feet on stuff.

When I got home from work I grabbed the video camera and taped our training session outside. I used the small plate again for leg pivots. Considering the obnoxious neighbor dogs were barking the whole time, I thought he did well to keep his focus. We also did some back-ups onto the a-frame, and some more teeter bangs.

I had a meeting at 1:00 so playtime had to wait. Once that was over with we went outside and did some sends around the cone. Jedi is getting the hang of sending from both directions, although he still likes to cut behind me when going counter clockwise. He does a bit better if I do a collar grab and release him.

After work I decided to head out with Jedi and Secret to the local high school for our outing of the day. I was hoping that maybe there would be something going on at the track or ball fields, but unfortunately when I pulled up the only thing going on was girls soccer practice that was wrapping up. Oh well, so much for that idea.

I parked the van at the back edge of the fields and we just started heading for the main road. There is a little neighborhood across from the school, so I figured we would check that out. Jedi unloaded himself while we were cutting across the grass, so I found myself in search of a trash can. I spotted one across the parking lot at the school, so we made our way in that direction. As we turned around and started to head back to the street I heard a noise, looked up, and saw us being charged by an off leash dog. Sigh.

At least I had a lot of warning, because I could hear him coming from a mile away between the sound of his nails scrambling on the pavement and the growl he was emitting. I elected to pick Jedi up to avoid any possible interaction, knowing I wouldn't have any hesitation in kicking the dog in the head if need be. Jedi let out a couple of tough guy woofs but in general was really good at not doing anything to escalate the situation. Secret gets a giant gold star for silently making it very clear that she had every intention of killing this strange dog if he came any closer (I thank her for the silent part because I'm sure this helps to not get Jedi riled up). She bared her teeth at the dog while I yelled at it and stomped at it to get away. Thankfully the dog wasn't stupid enough to continue his advances. Eventually its owner started yelling for him, although the owner couldn't be bothered to actually come out in front of the house to see what his dog was up to. The dog managed to cross back across the road without getting hit.

The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful. We crossed paths with a couple of folks out walking their fat but well-behaved lab mix. There was a very playful husky tied out in the front yard of another house that we passed by twice. There were also a LOT of bunnies in this neighborhood, but Jedi didn't seem to notice them (Secret did).

We came back out of that neighborhood and decided to continue our walk by going around the front of the school along the main roadway. I elected not to make the dogs pose in front of the school sign since there was so much traffic passing by and I didn't want to look like an idiot.  :o)  I didn't want to go another full block up the street, so we cut up to go behind the school and ended up walking the fence line of the track field to get us back around to the ball fields where we could walk back to the van. We were out for about 40 minutes today.

For dinner tonight I set up some "cavaletti" to get the last bit of video for our puppy class. Silvia says to use objects like boxes, drawers, etc., but I can't come up with anything here so I elected to set up jump standards and just use low bars. I set everything at 4" but most of them ended up getting knocked down. I let that go for now with the goal of getting him to stop hopping/loping through (he's supposed to trot). For his first time I don't think he did too bad, but he's definitely an eager beaver.

We finished up by getting video of door/drawer slams and a quick clip showing his progress of 4-in to the food dish (since I can't keep him out of the darn thing lately). And yes, with all of this talk about video I did manage to get it edited tonight! I still need to submit it to class to get feedback from Silvia.

I would still like to put together clips of the other stuff that Jedi has been working on (like the spoon trick, backing up the stairs, side legs, sending around the cone), but I elected to keep this video limited to the stuff we're actually doing in Lesson 3 (I did include a little teeter slamming at the end, but I figure that goes with the drawer bit).

Day 38 - Bike trail (Iberia Ave)

Jedi had an abbreviated training session this morning for breakfast. I was about five stairs from the bottom when my feet completely disappeared out from under me and poof, down I went. Pretty much just like in a cartoon, the food went flying in what felt like slow motion as I thump-thumped my way to the bottom of the stairs. Ouch. Crap.

Poor Jedi, he didn't know what to make of this situation! I assured him all was right with the world and that it was okay to come down. The food was literally everywhere, so I just had him start to clean it up while I picked up what I could. I might have scrounged together about 1/3 - 1/4 of his normal rations. He was pretty good at clean-up crew.

What I did manage to pick up was used to do pivots to the leg on a dinner plate. Jedi transitioned to this flatter object with surprising ease. We did several circles in both direction and then we were out of food and done for that session.

I did our lunch training session outside when I got home from work. I took the video camera out again and let the other dogs serve as a distraction and started with the pivot on the plate. Somewhere during all of this I think Jedi inhaled a piece of kibble and he started to get all "huffy" like something needed to work its way back out. This continued to bother him through the remainder of this training session, including when we went over to do some bottoms on the a-frame. He was acting a bit worried by all of this, or at least didn't have his usual gusto, so we didn't get much good video footage from that session. The good news is that whatever it was finally worked his way out and he was fine doing a quick play session, and we got some good bottoms then.

We had a pretty quiet afternoon. I have homework that needs to get done tonight, so tonight's outing needed to be something we could complete relatively quickly. I also needed something that everyone could do since they were all stuck at home yesterday. That pretty much meant the bike trail since I'm not feeling ready to tackle all four on leash in town yet.

I went to the section of the trail that crosses Iberia Ave and took the path that heads towards Rockland. Much like the last part of the trail we took, this section is well surrounded by farmland and not too busy. When we first arrived we encountered a couple of gentlemen out running, but we didn't see anyone else after that. I was happy to see that Jedi was completely nonreactive to the running men. He really didn't seem to pay any attention to them at all (not even his typical, "Oh hi, people!").

I think we left home right as Jedi had been ready to settle down for a nap, so I actually felt kind of bad for him when we first set out. He looked so tired! We plugged on, though, and sure enough he woke up after a bit.

This section of the trail has a marshy area that floods regularly just shy of a mile and a half in from where I parked. I knew this was a push since Jedi started out tired, but I figured they would all enjoy playing in the water. I was correct about that! It was fairly deep, at least when you're Jedi's size. He followed Secret in, and while she could walk through the chest-deep water, Jedi soon found himself swimming. He went back several times, so apparently he was okay with this.

The swim totally charged him up and Jedi was a nut for the entire walk back. Normally he sticks fairly close, at least within the range of the flexi leashes that Kizzy and Kaiser are on. He was a little more adventurous on the trip back, though, and followed Secret a bit more. We passed over a little bridge that has a tiny stream that runs under it and I think he ran down there three times before all was said and done. He likes water!

We had a train go by at one point in our walk. Secret always gets put back on leash for trains because she likes to chase them. Obviously I wasn't going to take any chances with Jedi, so he went on leash as well. He saw a train that one time in the Bangor park, but the tracks run pretty close to the trail and I wasn't sure what to expect from him. Of course, he barely batted an eye at it.

Jedi was pretty pooped by the time we got back to the van, but he woke up nicely for dinner tonight. We went back outside and had another go at taping some pivot to leg from the plate and he did super well. It's probably time to start inching away from the target plate to see if he will still stick to my leg. After that we went back for another go backing onto the a-frame bottoms and this time he was much more himself with the usual energy level. I think the only thing I have left to video is slamming cupboards, so I'll have to try to get that tomorrow and hopefully start to put some video together to share.