Another fantastic night. I put her on the bed and lie down. Stitch immediately goes to my knees, snuggles in, and goes to sleep. Sleeps until 9 AM.
On the way to her puppy class, she’s better than she has been. I have a loaner car but she hops right in. I let her sit on the front seat for a few minutes, then sprinkle some kibble on the floor. She doesn’t buy it. I push her off the seat onto the floor. She jumps up. I tell her No and push her off the seat. She decides to eat the kibble and stays on the floor. When she’s done I wait until she lies down and then toss another handful on the floor. Lesson learned. In the front seat, dogs lie on the floor and get kibble. No whining all the way there.
She’s excellent in puppy class for the first 40 minutes. I’m particularly pleased with the entrance. Loose leash from car to door, down hallway, and into the training room. A bit of enthusiasm, but after about 3 seconds, she remembers what she doing and goes across the room to our chair with a loose leash as well.
At about 45 minutes, she loses interest or gets full – she didn’t pee on the way in and leaves quite a puddle outside when we leave, so maybe that was it. At any rate, she just stops listening and responding. Finally she gives me a few more things and I take her leash off to go play with puppies. Periodically we call them out of the group to give them treats, and she comes halfway to me, then slaps her forehead and say “WHAT are you doing? You don’t want to go over there!”, turns and heads off in a new direction. What’s THAT about? I dunno. Teacher lends me some venison sausage, then I can’t get her to go play with anybody else. Obviously I need to upgrade her on-the-road kibble and dry cat food with some wieners or something better.
Stop at the Dairy Queen on the way home. They give her a couple of Milk-Bones and she can’t chew them. Takes 20 minutes to gum them to death. I finish my Blizzard and sit reading a book for a few more minutes. She tries whining but nothing happens so she shuts up. Hmmm – this is something all my dogs practised a lot in my old soccer-mom days, but nowadays when we drive we’re usually going somewhere. Have to stop at the DQ more often!
I give Scuba her supper, but before I can train Stitch, I get waylaid by something on TV. Stitch is extremely annoyed. She jumps on me. I put her on the floor. She jumps on me again, and I put her on the floor again. Then she gets serious. She barks, whines, and paws at me. Too bad I don’t have the closed captioning on! In all she throws her tantrum for 2 minutes before she gives up and lies down at my feet. I let her lie there for another two minutes before I get up and go into the parlour to train.
We work on retrieving a bit. She’s totally understanding the requirements, but tends to pick the dumbell off the floor with her tiny new incisors. This afternoon I found two broken puppy molars being pushed out of the way by her new ones, so I move the dumbbell around in my hand and let her target it in motion a few times, then quit.
Scuba and I did agility tonight, which reminds me of paw targets, so I put out one of her pink lids and start kicking it around the room. No problem, she whaps it thoroughly with her paw no matter where I put it. I still haven’t got a voice cue I’m happy with for this. I said “next time” I train a dog, there’s going to be definite cues for both nose targets and paw targets, and now that I’m here, I can’t think of anything I like for the cue.
Then we do position cues again. She’s getting very good at Sit from Down. Still having a bit of trouble with Down from Stand.
Notes from 2015: In 2004 it was OK to have dogs on the floor of ihefront seat. Not anymore – between going through windshields and getting killed by airbags, please please put your dog in a good crate or seat belt harness to travel anywhere! An excellent resource: http://www.centerforpetsafety.org