3 Months!

Wow, what a summer – all this record breaking heat is getting old fast. Newest record broken, longest streak of 90+ days in a row in July, 10, in fact. Which is hard on the dogs, it’s too hot to take them out even later at night, it’s still 90 degrees! Puppies need action though, and you can only do so much mental work with Figgy, you know, like a minute.

And forget about taking her out into more public areas, it’s way too hot. Knock on wood, Figgy has been pretty solid about new places and people, so hopefully we’re not missing out on anything important. At 3 months she’s pretty much been to all the places I normally go, which does not include any real city life, traffic or crowds. Not things I enjoy! I’d be curious to see if you did stick Fig in a city if she’d still try to chase every car. Or her head would explode. We’ll have to find out, one of these days.

Figgy is maturing and we occasionally are able to train a little here or there. She has been enjoying roast beef and provolone recently, and for multiple sessions! So maybe that’s her thing, expensive deli items. Whatever works. I haven’t attempted to use them outside of a boring house though, I imagine she’d still spit them out. Because our training has been so haphazard nothing is at all really trained. I always have such good intentions to ‘clean up’ a behavior when we start training, but she just takes everything in other directions, because if you get too focused on one thing she’ll leave, so you have to go with where the wind takes her. Good thing I’m used to taking the round about route to training, I know it will all work out in the end.

She has kind of had the moment of realization that her behavior makes the game go, she does offer behavior, but she’s still not pushing me and really problem solving anything yet. So lots of prompting and luring by me still, with a high rate of reinforcement and going with a new direction if that’s how it takes her. We have waving with both paws – now on a platform! She LOVES roll over and play dead, it’s hard to get her to stop just flopping around on her back. She finally is offering back-up, her down CAN be a nice foldback down, but she likes to come forward. She knows spin but has a definite preference for one direction over the other, the same with her pedestal pivot. She is surprisingly bad at wobbly things, she just falls off so easily – which is funny as she’s so athletic in many ways, but not in a THOUGHTFUL way, so lots to work on there. We’ve started leg weaving, she actually seems to like hand touches and we’ve worked on restraint. So far haven’t had any issues trimming nails as long as I’m nice and patient, sitting still is not her natural state. We did a crash course in staying while hiking last week, which went surprisingly well and has continued at home … in some situations. In others she acts like she has no concept.

My goal was to work on stay, recall and crate, and they are all better than they were, anyway. Figgy is surprisingly attached to her crate, especially considering her initial drama with confinement. She now WANTS to sleep in it at night and goes in willingly to eat. Yes, that’s right, Figgy is now sometimes voluntarily eating! And is it the most expensive kibble? No, of course not, of our kibble varieties we tried, she likes American Journey, which I got because you get 50% off your first bag. But she likes it … to a point, anyway. She munches on it, rarely finishes it, but is eating what she needs, she feels fine, a little scrawny, but I think that’s fine for a puppy. So it’s just available in her crate whenever I put her in and she often actually seems somewhat enthused to see it.

Fig is still in her crate quite a bit, because she still pees ALL THE TIME. And just no discrimination. I’m always trying to get her to potty before we have house time, and she just goes out to squat on the concrete, right next to the grass, constantly. So weird. And it’s never large amounts, so she can be ready to pee again. And as long as she’s busy and moving around, she’s fine, but not at all trustworthy to just hang out in the house, and probably won’t be for some time. But she has learned that peeing outside gets the environmental reward of getting to play inside, and that’s powerful.

Dogs are kind of done with her in many ways, but Fig is actually getting more sensitive. If she gets told off by a dog she SOMETIMES comes and sulks next me … and sometimes just seems oblivious. Navarre is the biggest puzzle, sometimes he seems to LOVE her and races around the yard with and wrestles and has a great time. And sometimes he won’t go near her, hides around the side of the house and tells her off quite severely. Bright and Haku don’t like her, but, once again, they don’t HATE her. Bright does like to tell Fig and Navarre to stop playing, but that’s just normal Fun Police stuff.

Figgy is 3 months old today, and starting to get busier, but more interactive. There’s more of a brain in there that is thinking about things instead of just reacting. With all the hot weather I think she was bored and she ripped up a bunch of my new plants in the yard. Sigh. But, yeah, puppy stuff. She’s more obnoxious to the cats now too. Definitely not the easy to assimilate puppy, I have to a lot more managing with Fig. I think we can start to actually do some training now though, I think we’ve gotten past the infant stage.

I have been trying to take some video of her here and there, I need to collect it all for that first month and put it together. I did do a little training video the other night, just really simple stuff: