Enjoy the beginning of the Dog Days of Summer.  Keep cool, everyone!

What an amazing week last we had!  Well, actually it took a few days to really get into a groove, but the walks have gotten so much better and on Sunday something slightly amazing happened.
We were walking around the block when a little black fluffy-dog-thing came rushing up to us, barking and full out annoying.  It stayed out of reach, thankfully, and Ray was straining at the leash, jumping and wanting to play.  Finally the owner sauntered over and started calling her dog.  It went like this: she stood about five feet away, called her dog and then turned her back to walk away.  Rinse and repeat three times.  My heart was pounding and I was trying to get Ray to walk away while she finally got her dog to leave, giggled a “sorry.”  Then when they finally left, Ray and I went a few more feet and then … I believe he settled himself.  We walked to the other side of a parked car and Ray sat.  I got him into “down” and gave him a couple of treats and lavishly praised him for the time out before we set off again.  A similar type of settling also happened later that evening which is great.

The problem is settling and not jumping are huge obstacles for us and though this was a step in the right direction we still deal with it too often.  There’s a point at which Ray gets too wound up and though I try to avoid getting to that point, it still happens and it is disheartening.  There’s a mixture of too much puppiness still with some attitude and topped off with a dash of stubbornness and when that happens, it is upsetting.  I want to make sure he doesn’t jump and nip and sometimes he is very sensitive and eager to please and other times he is the Honey Badger and he just don’t give a shit.  I’m thinking about some individualized classes but the mindset is almost that I’d have to get him wound up just to teach him to settle.  Seems counterproductive. 

Do you have or have you encountered similar issues?  How did you deal with them?

I hate to state the obvious, but practice makes perfect things really good.  No one and nothing can be perfect, but with hard work and constant practice, things go in the right direction.

As I wrote before, I get nervous leash walking with Ray even though he is generally good.  The part aside from the ‘generally good’ is what worries me.  When he gets too tired or too stimulated things degenerate to where I just want to run away from him and hide or lob him  into tomorrow or something like that.  It’s still way better than before when he was just a three month old jumping shark mouth attached to a springy body. 

Sometimes it takes a determined refocus for me to get back to the basics.  One, we need to practice and train every day, even if it is just squeezing in a few basic commands in the morning and brushing up on rusty skills.  I’ve been making  a concious effort of having  Ray sit to have his leash attached and using every leash walk as a training opportunity.  That one is hard since all of his outside interactions have to be on leash while the yard is torn up and the fence is down. 

On today’s walk, we did really well in that there was minimal pulling and he refocused and checked in often. 

That leash looks taut, but wasn’t…yay!  

He even went out with Asia and she said he did wonderfully well.  That gave me so much confidence that we went out for an evening walk nearby.  The traffic stimulated him enough that I turned it into a walk around the block, but even so he did really well.  Go Ray! 

Now tonight he did something I’ve never seen him do before…he left the room I was in and went to lay down by himself.

We will definitely be incorporating more walks into our daily routine!

I’m not sure what kind of time table I was imagining but it certainly wasn’t like this.  Day One of the pool install went from this:

To this:

In less than six hours.

Of course Ray was wondering why if he is not allowed to dig holes in the yard, why are these strangers allowed to? 

Naturally, Ray being an awesome digger, well on his way to the hole olympics, he felt highly confident that he could dig a hole of this magnitude without the crutch of using heavy equipment.

While the yard is under construction, we are working hard to find ways in which to occupy Ray and also to get him some exercise.  Walks, of course, are going to be the order of the day which makes me slightly panic-y excited to practice our on leash walking.  I will be on vacation this week for the first week of install, so we should get plenty of practice in.
As for keeping him occupied while inside and directing his attention away from the loud noise of the heavy machinery out back, we’d like to thank Emily from Our Waldo Bungie for turning us on to these Chew Gourmet Bones. 

I’d say he likes it.

Ray loves playing with his “crinkie” which is the most durable toy EVER.  You insert an empty water bottle in it and he can play for hours. Sometimes under good supervision we let him play with a water bottle that isn’t in the “crinkie” which is fun for all of the extra loud noise it makes.  Last night, however, I rinsed out an empty milk container and gave it to him to play with. 

I think he liked it.

What often surprises me is whenever Ray and I go to Green Dog goods to pick up some more food, supplies or just visit they comment that he has doubled in size since the last visit.  I find that hard to wrap my head around, being so close to him.  But as I look back at old pictures I see just how fast he is growing and how much he is changing.

Gotcha Day 1/19

Oddly enough each week in the early days, it seemed to me that he was growing quickly and I felt like he rapidly lost his puppy-like features.  In retrospect, I think I was seeing one type of change while staying oblivious to another.  I know he outgrew his clothing at an alarming rate but he seemed to have the same collar for ages.  I’m sure the anticipation of our first Sirius Republic collar made that situation seem like it dragged on forever.  He finally reached the stage where I felt safe to order the 15-17 inch collar when I measured his neck at 14.5 inches.  By the time we actually received that collar, we weren’t able to use it at the smallest setting.


April 16th 

Throughout most of May he seemed to pretty well plateau off as far as growth, though he still got the growing comments from people he hadn’t seen in at least a week.  Since he had been growing so quickly, though I try to make a habit of taking him in to the vet to pick up the heartworm and flea meds so that I can weigh him while there.  The last visit was a little early being around the 23rd or so and he was still right around 43 pounds.  Imagine my surprise when I weighed him over the weekend and he, with three attempts just to make sure I was seeing this correctly, weighed in at 51 pounds.  Despite becoming a big boy so fast, there is something that has remained the same:

He is still Mama’s lap dog. 

Like seemingly every weekend during the warm weather months, last weekend was busy, busy, busy. For nearly the past year we’ve had our home on the market as we were looking to move closer to where Asia and I work but most importantly we wanted an inground pool. The last few summers have been scorchers and we’ve dragged the poor pool guy out here to give us an estimate each year and then while weighing the options have demurred. We felt like buying a home with a pool already done would be the more cost effective way to go. The down side, one of many, is that we’ve put an awful lot of work into this house to make it ours and we kind of hated to walk away from it. I guess we needn’t have feared. Throughout the past eleven months we’ve had our highs and lows and have finally come to the decision to stay and install that darned pool.
 
 So part of last weekend was dedicated to installing part of the new privacy fence between us and the neighbors while waiting to complete the remaining sides until after the pool installation. We also attended our neighbor’s surprise birthday party, another neighbor’s graduation party and celebrated Kevin’s birthday which was on Sunday. With all of the events and people around, I have to say Ray was on his best behavior. Actually, I don’t even know if that was Ray. We had such a good, social puppy who minded his manners at (nearly) all times. Sometimes, if you’re only six months old it is hard not to beg, but he was awesome. One of the highlights for me was when one of the people who came over (who owns a Bull Mastiff mix) saw Ray, asked what he was and said, “he won’t bite me, will he?” Why was that a highlight? I was able to calmly educate her on Pit Bulls and the negative impact of the media and then Ray set about charming her so that she was soon sitting on the ground petting him and oohing over how soft and sweet he is. Score one for Pit bulls!

By the time Sunday actually rolled around, Ray was pretty much the victim of a fun hangover so he slept and generally chilled nearly all of the day.