I’m not over last weekend yet. I have a splitting headache and visitors. Stitch has a puppy class. Stitch is awful. It’s like she hasn’t been trained for the last week at all. (hmmm). In the first place she doesn’t want to get in the car. Then she whimpers in her crate most of the way there. She wants to go play with the other puppies. I have to stand on my head to get her to come (she was good at this last week) (She Knows This) (I want to strangle her). She won’t Sit and at one point I find myself actually reaching for her butt to push it down. Argh. The instructor comes over and looks at me and I realize/explain that she’s got an eye infection and the drops I’m putting in her eyes sting a bit, which is why she’s leery of sitting near me. The *%^#$ instructor says “So it’s not Stitch’s fault?” I want to strangle her. Of COURSE it’s not Stitch’s fault. HowEVer, one reason I’m attending this class is that the instructor, unlike many, has the guts to say things like this to me. I put Stitch on a tie-out on the other side of the room, sit back down and pull myself together.
When I go back to get Stitch, she’s happy to see me. I start clicking a LOT for a loose leash, and I start (surprise) getting eye contact, so I click for that. We do some loose leash walking, and I click for that. By then Stitch is into the game enough to do some Zen – she’s brilliant at this and actually does Zen instead of wanting to visit other puppies.
When we’re done, I ask the instructor to test her on 20 seconds of hand Zen, which she passes (ahem) handily. She also passes all of Level One, but my headache is too bad to bother with the Come Game. We’ll leave that for next time. When we leave, she thinks about not getting in the car for a minute, then climbs right in.
After supper, my headache is worse and I take Stitch and go to bed. I just want her to lie down on the bed with me, but she thinks this is outrageous. She yaps and fusses. Finally I turn her upside down in one arm beside me and we both go to sleep. As I’m falling asleep I’m thinking “Leave her for a week and she doesn’t even know how to fall asleep on the bed!”