Saturday, May 21, 2011


On her second day after school drop off she spent the early morning toddling around after us.
She met:
  •  the kittens more fully and learned that 4:1 are not odds in her favor with curious kittens.  Whichever she was sniffing the other two or three would be patting her tail.
  • the sheep and our neighbors visiting cows and jumped up for a better sniff but without being over the top excited.
  • gardeners with linetrimmers, leaf blowers and pruning sheers as well as hard-hats and protective goggles
  • various people at he hardware store, grocery and a park, cafe
  • plastic door strips on a shop that was closed, with Lily flipping them about and making all sorts of ruckus while I encouraged her to push them with her nose and investigate.

We had several tuggy sessions and introduced the idea of running out to a thrown toy (small rope bone and plastic baby teether) and bringing it back, again with polite releasing. More work on basic sits and downs, touching etc.  We also worked a bit on bite inhibition (aka YOUCH! needle teeth hurt!) playing very gentle mouth games with my fingers.

Friday after school drop off she met:
  • various people at Coles, the shopping strip and neighborhood in Pakenham and in Gembrook - not many men unfortunately.   
  • a community van which is equipped with automated lowering and raising ramps for wheelchair users which they were very nice in letting us go up to and have a meet-n-greet.
  • the 7-9's class at La's school as well.
    Manners wise we continued with sits and downs, making them downs from sits and sits from downs as well as continuing with targeting introducing a target plate.  We continued with retrieving thrown toys (soft tuggies and plastic teething rings) as well as tuggy. We introduced the idea that if she wants to get out or into her pen she needs to sit and be polite.  We introduced a bit of doggy zen, object trading, some basic body handling (light 'pinches' on the webbing between toes, feet, ears, lips, collar holding/tugging etc), some short and light restrained recalls and eye contact.  She's been absolute gold with her house training, not a single accident and only one time using the newspapers provided in her pen - which was really my fault as I had the choice between taking her out when I saw her looking fidgety and chasing the naked-wet-soapy 2 year old who was streaking through the house on her way to merry mayhem, so puppy got ploinked in her pen till I caught and nappied the 2 year old!
 As you can see a busy puppy is well behaved by default...

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