Day 75 - Wazee Riders Horse Show

It is day 75 since Jedi came home! We are officially 3/4 of the way done with our 100 experiences in 100 days project. We're on the home stretch.  :o)  Jedi continues to do well sleeping out of the crate at night. He appears to stay on the bed until the early morning hours, when he lets himself outside and then comes back in. For breakfast this morning we went downstairs and Jedi was introduced to the large peanut (mine is 80cm). I clicked/rewarded for pretty much any movement that he offered during this session. I use my legs to stabilize the peanut and also keep one end propped against the wall, but it was still pretty wiggly when Jedi stood up. He was not bothered by any of this, though, and he sure gives it his all.

I worked from home today because I had an all-day meeting. If I would have gone into the office I would have missed at least an hour of it to drive home and then feed/play with Jedi. Because of that, and because my boss was in his own all-day meeting, I decided to just call in. Note to self, calling into an all-day meeting is horrendous. My meeting didn't start until 9:00, so I decided to walk Jedi and Kizzy up to the vet's office to get a weight on Jedi so that we could chime in and compare him to the brothers that were posting their weights the last couple of days. Jedi weighed in at 21.8 lbs today, so only a one pound gain since his appointment last week. His brothers are reporting weights in the 24-25+ lb range! I propped Jedi up against the fridge and held a marker over his withers to get a height. This is far from accurate, but he measured 16.25" today.

One nice thing about being stuck on that awful phone call is that my hands were free to finally pump up my new FitPaws donut and stabilizing ring. They inflated faster than anything else I've ever had to pump up, so they were ready to go when we took a lunch break. Jedi did really well with the donut and all of the wobbling (even using the stabilizing ring). He started out offering side legs on it, then moved to the back feet, and eventually backed himself all the way on. At that point I only rewarded when he stayed on and we moved back and forth from sitting to standing. I'm still amazed at how challenging this particular piece of equipment is. I'm also amazed at how much FitPaws equipment is now in my basement...

We cleaned up the yard and then Jedi got in some play time with cones and a tunnel. Yes, I finally brought out a tunnel for him. I set it up on the open side of my cone triangle. The short (12') tunnel fit nicely in this space with a slight curve. Jedi did just awesome with this addition to our handling drills. I started out by throwing the toy every time he came out of the tunnel but quickly moved to being able to ask for sequences coming out of the tunnel. I think I was most impressed with the fact that he could circle the cones nearest the tunnel without sucking to the tunnel. His focus was really kind of amazing in that respect. Having the tunnel seemed to speed him up even more, too!

The much-needed play time helped settle Jedi until about 3:00 or so. Wouldn't you know it, but the dogs were dead to the world right up to the point where I finally had to provide some input to that meeting. Thanks dogs, I always love when you bark for all of my coworkers to hear. Thankfully our meeting wrapped up about an hour early (scheduled until 5:00), so I decided to work all of the dogs through our little cone/tunnel exercise. My first plan was to let them hang out in the potty yard with the gate closed. Jedi let me know pretty quickly that this was not going to work, as he started to scream while I worked Kizzy (probably not helped by the fact that I had his racoon tail). I put all of the non-running dogs in the house and locked the dog door, which Jedi didn't like any better, but at least his screaming wasn't wide open to the world anymore. I worked Kizzy, Kaiser, Kizzy again, and then Secret before finally bringing Jedi out for another turn. He was even faster than he was at lunch time, so apparently watching the other dogs have a turn gets him super jazzed. I'll have to try to get his latest handling work on video one of these days.

For Jedi's outing of the day we drove up to Black River Falls to go to the Wazee Riders gaming (horse) show again. I saw on Facebook that it was going to be in the outdoor arena tonight, so I figured this would be a great chance to expose Jedi to the running horses in a non-enclosed space. In addition, it was only 70 degrees outside, so I figured it would be a beautiful night to sit out and watch some horses. Jedi was still pooped from his play session when we left home, so he slept hard all the way to Black River Falls.

We found a nice spot in the grass some distance away from the arena to start. We were next to the driveway, though, where horses often walked past on their way too and from the ring. This gave Jedi the chance to see horses up close but kept him further away from the main action. It didn't hurt at all that we arrived when the younger kids were wrapping up the pole bending class, so there wasn't a ton of speed and excitement off the bat. Jedi noticed the horses in the ring, but didn't react to them. We were quickly able to start moving closer.

It didn't take long for the kids to start drawing to Jedi like flies. At one point I counted 8 kids around him at once, and they were all trying to play with him at the same time. Jedi thought this was pretty cool. He tried to play with everyone, but he was definitely most drawn to whomever had the racoon tail at the time. When not playing with toys he was happy to sit in laps and give kisses. During all of this he never so much as glanced at the horses in the ring. I made sure to never let go of his leash, though, just in case. The last thing we would need is for him to suddenly see the horses and take off running.

Similar to our last trip to the horse show, Jedi reached his limit after about an hour. They had moved on to barrel racing and the fast horses were running. Once Jedi realized this, that was about it. His guts exploded with excitement. I gave him a few chances where we walked away when he barked and then he got a chance to go closer again, but as soon as we turned back he was lunging towards the ring (horse or no horse). We backed way off and he did much better, but he was still getting too excited when the fast horses would run. At that point I figured his brain had experienced enough fun for the night and it was time to leave.

For dinner tonight we worked on healing out in the yard. I finally checked in to my Silvia Trkman puppy class today to see what the latest lesson is. Sure enough, glued to the leg while walking is one of our exercises. Backwards figure eights are also on the list, which I've never tried to train before and I'm not entirely sure how to go about it. Also on the list for this lesson are teaching the skateboard trick (anyone have a skateboard...?) and cik/cap finally showed up. I might have to drag a cone down to the basement so that I can use food for that one.

Day 74 - Wegner Grotto County Park

The pumpkin seems to have helped Jedi's gurgling belly. He was a good boy and stayed on the bed last night, but did let himself outside before I got up. He and Kizzy went out together, as evidenced by their wet feet when they both came jumping up on the bed together. For breakfast this morning we went downstairs to play with the balance discs. First I wanted to see if Jedi remembered how to do a full pivot. Granted, he never really enjoyed pivoting on the disc, but I can see that maybe we should revisit this behavior now and again. He did offer pivots to the right, but I don't think he ever did a full turn to the left before he got cranky about pivoting. We spent the rest of breakfast playing with the small disc stacked on top of the big disc for added difficulty.

I got home from work a little earlier than usual since I had a 1:00 meeting. I caught all of the dogs by surprise, which is always entertaining ("Sleeping? We weren't sleeping!"). For lunch I took Jedi downstairs and let him have a treadmill session. He's gone running over to that side of the basement on several of our recent trips down there, so I figured he was telling me something. He did great today. I started him out at 1 mph and quickly bumped him up. We made it up to 2.2 or 2.3 mph today, which is still just a fast walk, unless he falls behind and has to trot to catch up. I have to be careful about not letting food drop at this speed, though, because Jedi will try to follow it down the belt to pick it up, resulting in him falling off the end and face-planting the moving belt. The good news, I guess, is that he wasn't in the least bit phased by this.

I had just enough time to pick up the yard before my meeting started, so Jedi had that time to run around and play. It wasn't nearly enough, though, and he made a few cameo appearances in my meeting today (it was just my team, so I had my camera on) as he brought toys to me and asked me to play. We finally got outside around 2:30 or so, where we played with the cones again. I moved them out a bit again, so they are probably about 15' or so apart now? One of these days I should start to add the tunnels to our sequencing, but I'm lazy about dragging them out. We also worked on our spins and twirls during this session. Jedi's spin is getting to the point where I just use the verbal and flinch with the toy and he'll spin to the left. The twirl is a bit stickier, but I think it's due to my own awkwardness with the toy in my left hand. My movements are still pretty exaggerated to get the turn to the right.

Today's outing was really nothing more than a glorified photo opportunity. On my drives to Black River Falls I keep seeing a sign for Wegner Grotto County Park. I looked it up on the internet and saw that it's a park with a bunch of artistic statues and figures covered in colored glass. It's just a tiny piece of land out in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't an outing that would wear the dogs out, but it was good for practicing posing skills. I don't know why I took Secret along, as she's been cranky about sharing pictures with Jedi (such a diva). Thankfully I got her to oblige for several shots. In general, the dogs thought it was the worst outing ever. At least they got treats out of the deal. We didn't stick around terribly long because technically, according to the signs posted, dogs aren't allowed in the park...

To make up for the self-serving outing of the day with the sole purpose of getting pictures for the blog, we came home and played frisbee. Jedi is getting really good at grabbing moving rollers! At least when they don't run into things, that is, because I apparently have little to no control over which direction a roller roles. I let them run quite a bit tonight, which led to a predictable overly dramatic display of Jedi flopping himself into the pool. I imagine if I didn't have the pools he would turn into a dog who digs himself holes to cool off -- so I'm glad I have the pools!

For dinner Jedi ate out of a bowl because I'm lazy and figured it was the easiest way to give him more pumpkin (I opened a big can, so we have a lot to go through!).

Day 73 - Agility Class (week 5)

Jedi made it all night on the bed again last night. We might be starting to settle into a routine! Okay, it's probably a bit early to say that, but he's been doing well. I appreciate not waking up to barking. For breakfast this morning we went downstairs and played on the FitPaws stuff again (do you notice how I go in streaks with these things?). Today I switched it around and had Jedi put his front feet on the disc and find the pods with his hind feet. That was apparently super hard! I took the disc away and once he was consistently finding the pods with his back feet I added two more for the front. By the end we were getting all four feet on four separate pods.

When I got home from work we went out into the yard to work on heeling skills. It's been several days since we've done anything with this and Jedi took a bit to settle into it. It probably didn't help that I started with him on my left and that is his more difficult side. I'm just going to take a stab that it's because of my absolutely horrible ability to accurately deliver food on that side. Once Jedi stopped bouncing around and swinging his butt around to face me things went well. He did even better on my right, and then we ended on the left.

I opted not to run Jedi this afternoon to save him for his agility class tonight. When I think about it (especially as Jedi continues to bring me a toy and I continue to throw it across the room as I type this), this is probably the stupidest notion ever. I'm pretty certain I could run the snot out of him after lunch and he would be fully recovered by the time class starts at 6:15, especially with that two hour drive/nap. Regardless, he did fine this afternoon without play time. He threw a toy at me briefly but managed to mostly nap the afternoon away. Even then, he slept the whole way to Middleton. He's such a good traveler.

We had another fun night at our agility foundations class. My little group started out on the side doing the jump (no bars) pinwheel. We waited for our turn by practicing bottoms, which was pretty challenging for Jedi because the travel plank was right next to the divider, behind which was much tunnel fun and the most squeaking I think we've ever heard (someone was trying very hard to keep their dog's attention and he didn't give a lick about the toy she had -- but Jedi did). He stayed with me and gave me some good bottoms, though. We started with food and then moved on to his ball on a rope.

When it was our turn for the pinwheel the instructor made me stand in the center. That's like my "no fly zone" in agility, as I don't do well standing in one place (this comes from Secret's motivational issues and the need to always be in motion to keep her driving). Thankfully this is only my problem and Jedi was go-go-go and didn't care if I was moving or not. The instructor quickly started to push the standards further apart so that Jedi would need to work to find them a bit more. He didn't have any problems with this and even got the one that the instructor sneaked out when my back was turned. Because pinwheels are dreadfully boring, I threw in some wrap/front crosses for some changes of direction.

Our next station was the tunnel, where tonight they were working on gaining more independence with the tunnel entry and being able to send the dog from an angle. I probably shouldn't have Jedi do stuff that is so much more advanced than the other dogs in the class, but he's fun, so I do. I varied it up on each turn and was able to set him up 10+ feet to the side of the entrance and send him, as well as stand 3/4 of the way down the tunnel and send him back up to find the entrance. He sure does love his tunnels. I even threw in a rear cross on one of them, but I'm sure he didn't even notice it since he's just running after his toy when he blasts out.

Next up they took us into the turf training space next to our training ring. I wasn't sure what fun we were in for in there, but it ended up just being an introduction to the bang game. Well, truly it was just an introduction to the sound a teeter makes when it hits the ground. Everyone was supposed to stuff their dog with treats as the teeter banged. I just used this time to tug with Jedi. He was only about 5' away from the teeter and he never so much as flinched when it banged.

Our next exercise was a figure-eight around traffic cones. Again, here's another instance where I almost feel guilty running Jedi next to everyone else, but he's been playing this game for a while. He did super and only snuck around me once. Because his cone work involves so much energy output and running out of him, I ended the exercise with Jedi before the rotation was done and we went and found a wobble board to play on instead. Again, we struggled a bit because Jedi heard all of the tunnel fun going on next door and said he'd rather go do that. He conceded and stuck with me, but I had to grab his leash several times as he attempted to join the tunnel party.

Finally we switched again and Jedi got to get his tunnel fix. During this rotation they started to add more of a bend to the tunnel. I continued to play with sending from different angles and Jedi didn't even seem to notice the bend (this was the first time he's seen that). Eventually even more of a curve was added. I got greedy with some of my sends and attempted to do a super "fancy" send to the the entry from the back end of the curve. This resulted in Jedi circling the entire tunnel several times, so I stopped trying to do advanced stuff and made sure he could be successful.

We got to do a couple of restrained recalls to end the night. On my first turn I did the "hide the toy" bit that we did at our seminar this weekend. My intention was for Jedi to come up on my left, but that little stinker started to dive for the right -- I think because the tunnel (folded down so the dogs couldn't get in) was on that side. I quickly dropped the toy down and got him back up on my left. He did better the next time. While the instructor was telling everyone what to work on for next week I worked on having Jedi wait while I got ahead and then released him as I took off running. I don't know if it was the toy (racoon tail) or the presence of the tunnel, but he had a really hard time holding his position for this today.

Jedi looked beat at the end of class tonight. Really, though, tonight's exercises amounted to nearly a solid hour of running (and tugging) for Jedi. He ran through the jump standards, he ran around the cones, and he ran through the tunnel. In addition, he sucked down nearly the entire bottle of water I'd brought along. Jedi was more unsettled on the drive home than I think I've ever seen him. He barked at me a couple of times around Baraboo, but we were still about 40 minutes from home when he started to get very shrill and insistent. This is not normal for him at all, so I finally pulled off at New Lisbon and stopped at a gas station to let him out. He peed a ton right away (note, he emptied himself of everything before we left CSZ) and then had an absolute explosion out of his rear. I'm not sure if all of that food from this weekend finally caught up with him? He also had a bit at class last night, which probably didn't help, either.

At any rate, that solved things and the rest of the drive home was quiet again. Jedi got gobs of pumpkin for dinner tonight since I figured he didn't need any more kibble rotting in his gut for the day (he got pretty much his full dinner ration at class). He certainly seems to feel fine and has been running around since we got home. I believe tonight he'll be sleeping out of the crate no matter where he decides to sleep, just so he can get that rumbly gut outside if/when needed.

Day 72 - Class night, NEW puppies!

Jedi's puppy seminar wore him out, which had the added bonus of lingering into today! Last night Jedi finally crashed around 8:30. I let him stay out of the crate last night and he stayed on the bed for the most part. I had to call him back up once and then he stayed put. We had a thunderstorm pass through around 4 a.m. and when I woke up Jedi was still on the bed. He wasn't on the bed anymore when I woke up around 6:20. When he came back up onto the bed his feet were wet, so it would appear he let himself outside. Since today was a work from home day I was super lazy and we stayed in bed until 7:00. Jedi did a good job at learning to cuddle in bed.

Inspired by all of the balance and conditioning work we did as part of the seminar, Jedi and I went downstairs to play with FitPaws equipment for his breakfast today. We played with the paw pods for this entire session. I started out with just two of them and focused on the front end, then added two more and mostly focused on the hind end. Jedi was very actively offering touches, but he was all over the place and perhaps moving too much for this exercise. I rewarded pretty much everything, though, and there were several times where he managed both hind feet on different pods. When trying to get all four feet on separate pods he would often share the same pod with a front/hind foot set. He'll get there.

We had a super quiet morning. Jedi was ready for his nap not long after breakfast. I'd say he was down for the count by 8:00, which is almost unheard of for him. He didn't move much until around lunchtime when I took everyone outside to clean up the yard. Jedi's lunch was going to have to wait, though, because today I was taking my dad out to lunch to make up for missing Father's Day yesterday since I was gallivanting around with Jedi. Jedi got to hangout in his crate while I was out.

My dad came in to say hello to the dogs when he dropped me off and I was good about asking Jedi to maintain his crate criteria by waiting until released when I opened the door. That was a real challenge for him with the excitement of me coming home AND my dad being there, but he did great! Once my dad left I grabbed Jedi's lunch and we went downstairs where we played on the FitPaws stuff again. This time I wanted to focus on him getting front feet on paw pods while the back feet were on the small balance disc. This really worked his core nicely, as those back feet were really engaging on the disc while he moved his front feet around. I didn't realize it until the end, but I think I may have somehow ended up shaping a drumming motion with the hind feet. I hadn't noticed it, but suddenly it seemed like he was doing it along with his front foot placement every time, and since I was clicking for the front feet he was also being rewarded for the drumming. It was super cute, we'll see if it happens again.

All was quiet until around 3:00 or so, when Jedi came back from inside all wet (surprise, surprise) and was waving a toy in my face. I figured he was due for some play time after such a quiet day, so I took him out and we played games with the cones for a while. We did a few "multi-spins" around the cone until Jedi started to get "stuck," at which point we moved to more forward motion. After a few repetitions I moved the cones further apart so that Jedi could build up a little more speed between turns. He's doing so well with these exercises. There was a lot less ducking behind me on the left today, too. We finished with a few straight-up fetches of the toy, and while doing so I decided to, just for giggles, see if Jedi would hold his sit while I threw the toy and wait until released. I was flabbergasted when HE DID. Every time! Holy buckets, when did he learn to do that?

Tonight was the first night of a new session of puppy classes, which meant that Jedi got to meet a bunch of new puppies! What a fun group we have for this class. They are all the perfect age, ranging from the youngest at 12 weeks up to just a little older than Jedi. The puppies were all extremely compatible during the first play session tonight. There were a couple of quieter puppies who more or less congregated with each other, and a few bolder puppies who stuck together. They are also very similar in size, save for the Cavalier puppy. Jedi had loads of fun and played very appropriately with everyone (even the Cavalier). He really enjoyed the Labrador, Springer Spaniel, and Labradoodle puppies. He got humpy a time or two but was able to keep quiet while he played this week.

Jedi was a good boy during class. The first week is always so much talking, so I kept Jedi busy by playing tug and shoving food in his mouth while he offered a ton of "sit pretty." Then he was a super demo dog while we worked on food ignoring -- super in that he was absolutely horrible at first. lol He quickly progressed to food on the floor, though, so he was able to show how to work through the steps. Then he was a pretty bad demo dog for the mechanics of luring because he was still in sit pretty mode and kept trying to grab onto my hands to go up (yeah, I should probably wean that and/or work the skill more the way we did at the seminar). But again, always good to demo some of the struggles you might encounter.

I entertained Jedi with a toy while the other dogs worked on beginning their walking on leash skills, but he was a model citizen when I very briefly walked him in a circle to give everyone a clear picture of "I don't expect heel position, but I want the leash to be loose." We talked a lot about toys and play tonight and I asked everyone to bring toys to class next week. I hope, if anything, they took something away from seeing Jedi play so much tonight. I really want to make it a big part of class and I hope it's well-received.

We ended the day with an introduction to restrained recalls. I warned the class that Jedi was probably going to start screaming in his crate and I was pretty much right. Lucky for Jedi, I don't think the class had a super clear picture of what it was that I was asking them to do, so after two dogs had gone I went to get him out of his crate for a demonstration (and yes, we maintained crate criteria!). He got to do two of them since the holder didn't release him on cue the first time, so I ran out of room to run. The good news is that the demo seemed to help and it got everyone a little more animated. Plus, who doesn't like to see a puppy like Jedi doing fun restrained recalls?  :o)

After everyone left for the night I spent some time playing with Jedi. We played with sends around the metal posts in the room and he got to fetch his Holee Roller for a while (trying to avoid those posts, but dang I have bad aim). We also went ahead and tried Ann's suggestion of throwing treats on the ground and then running off with the toy. I used hot dogs to try to up the appeal, but even with like seven hotdogs on the ground Jedi would leave before he got them all to chase me. Oh well, I got a little ahead, and he still enjoyed the game. We need to be careful in small spaces, though, because he kind of hit the wall a couple of times...

Next week we have a second (basics) class starting up, so it will be a longer night. It was nice to come home a little earlier this week. Jedi got a light dinner in his crate tonight since he'd eaten most of his food during class tonight. He must have gotten caught up on his sleep today, because he's been going strong since we got home.