15 Weeks!

Climb a dog food mountain!

It’s amazing how settled we are into routines now. He still asks to get on my lap to sleep most afternoons-  but now he’s a little too big for that to be comfortable for us. I can’t fit him and my computer.

Saturday classes were canceled due to a snow storm – but it was also one of the warmest days in a long time. We went out on two hikes to frolic in the 5+ inches of snow that fell.

We’ve been working on our homework for training class, it’s nice to have some specific tasks to focus on.

Monday night we did our first “crate in the room so you can be a demo dog.”  It went well for a little while and then he got impatient and noisy. We’ll get there!

Puppy class went really well yesterday – he still settles very nicely at my feet. We did his favorite thing – “obstacles” and he eagerly tried to climb into cones, stepped over everything else, and ended up spending part of the session being rewarded for -not- climbing on stuff. He really, really loves to climb. Sometimes even when he’s in my arms he will try climbing higher onto my head. He loves to go on anything he can find. He also tries to jump onto surface (doesn’t work -yet). One of my long-term concerns has been about his jumping – both parents (and all grandparents) were field/hunt test dogs – so jumping was/is not an important part of their competition ‘careers.’ I’ll be interested to see what happens when he’s an adult and we start his jumping training.

I wish I could get him in class/es elsewhere but that’s one part of puppy planning I didn’t do well – I’ve scheduled too much to be able to take the time off to manage to get anywhere.

Informal training:  Group leash walks, walking training, many repetitions of come when called throughout the day, seeing people/construction equipment/other dogs, playing with me even when he wants to do other things, focus in different environments, and more.

Formal training: Last week Laura asked about heeling, go outs, stays. The sad truth is we haven’t done much of that! We’ve done four heeling sessions, two on go outs, and maybe a few on formal stays. We’ve ‘touched’ on many different concepts and I have a few rough charts that I’m using for our training/experiences:

• Notes/chart from a Ward Falkner seminar I went to a few years ago
• Two tables from Fanny’s seminar(s) – one on ‘parts’ of various obedience exercises/trial prep and a table of concepts (with/without props, different body parts, rhythmic movement, passive/active, to/away handler, etc).  I’m trying to expose him to all of those things and then spending more time on his weaker areas (rhythmic behaviors, active, shaping without props…).
• A checklist from Maria Brandel’s puppy book. This one is more comprehensive which is good and not so good (overwhelming!).

Those are all obedience-related thing (our #1 priority) – but  lot of the concepts cross into other activities. I’m trying to do some exposure/specific skills/tasks for agility, tracking, and field work – those aren’t as important to me but I’d rather give him some introduction now and not need it than the other way around.

We don’t do as much formal training as I thought I would. Just like when Griffin was a puppy, it’s more fun to just play and hike and explore and watch him be fascinated by the world. I