Working from home

Due to a snow/ice storm, I worked from home today.  Shasta spent about 90% of the day under my chair while I worked.  A great way to endear herself to me! 

What You Got In Mind Dad?

Quite the look in that photo, isn't it?  It was more shaping fun with the puppy teeter tonight.  I was working on getting her to tip the board on her own however she wanted.  What I ended up shaping was the chain of behavior where she would get on the board in the middle, go to the end that didn't tip, turn around on the board, then walk across the board until it tipped!  Over and over again.

What did dawn on me tonight is that every time I've taken her to shape on the puppy teeter, I'm ready to stop before she is.  I'm not a training fanatic but for a 9-10 week old puppy, that strikes me as rather amazing.

I have noticed that she is hesitent to go through doorways.  Is that a normal puppy deal?  I can't remember.  Not that she won't but she pretty much always stops and waits for me to invite her through.  Hopefully it's not an indicator of some future issue, I've been down that road with Mara.

Shasta's First Road Trip

It's been almost a week since the last post because we went on our first road trip this last weekend, to Davenport, IA.  Shasta is a great traveler in the vehicle.  She relaxes, sleeps and entertains herself.  What a relief, it's such an important attribute in our life.  She did well in the hotel too.  A little restless on night one and, of course, we have to give in a little in a hotel room to be courteous to the other guests. But she didn't take advantage and was settled the other two nights.

No surprise, but she was a hit at the show.  Joan Meyer kept coming to her with empty water bottles to play with her.  And she was ready to play any time she was asked.  We joked that I could be in trouble if we ever show under Joan and she has her bottle of water somewhere on the course!  I also had a number of people take her and walk her around the show without me: Joan Meyer, Tammy from Iowa (why can't I ever remember her last name) and Sandy Kott.  Great experience for Shasta.

We did some clicker training tonight on the teeter board again.  Fun!  She was really offering a lot of behaviors and it was fascinating to watch her stop at times and kind of look at the board like "what's getting that food?".  We did some board tipping.  And I also spent some time getting her to put all four feet on the board and wait on it.   She was offering a lot of behaviors and a number that I found cute and I would momentarily think about trying to shape a different behavior.  That led me to being inconsistent in envisioning what I wanted to click.  Hopefully it doesn't confuse her too much and I can have a clearer plan next time.

Life Turned Upside Down

I'm a creature of habit.  I love my routines.  A young puppy does not jive well with that.  It's such a disruption.  Shasta is probably about as good of a puppy as one could want in this regard but I'm a big enough baby that it's still a tough adjustment.

We did some more training yesterday.  More teeter board shaping.  I was getting all four feet on the teeter.  When she got a little bored with the board, I went about 15 feet away to start teaching touch.  What does Shasta do?  Turns away, runs 15 feet and starts walking on the teeter.  Must have done so about 10 times.  So cute, so amazing.

Today was our first real snow for Shasta.  I didn't get any play time out there but Kris said Shasta was "ballistic" in the snow this morning.  Disappointed to have missed it, hopefully she keeps that glee.

This photo is Shasta lying on Zenna.  C'mon, that's cute!  Zenna has really come around with Shasta, playing nicely with her for long stretches now before heading off to the sofa for safety (for now anyway!).  Sonic has been playing nicely too, just not as often as Zenna now.  But I thank them both for taking some puppy attention at this point in time.

First "Real" Training

I brought in the puppy teeter into the basement today and did some shaping/clicking with Shasta.  It's always so interesting to watch them try and figure it out.  We went from sniffing it, to touching it, to putting both front feet on to putting all four feet on the teeter.  Then I sat down on the tip side of it and went through the same process.   Not surprisingly she wasn't as happy about doing so on the tip side but still did it quite frequently.

Thanks to our mild winter, we played a few times in the back yard too, me, Sonic and Shasta.  Sonic played ball and Shasta mostly chased once Sonic got close enough returning the ball.  Shasta also played a little tug with a furry tail toy.

Steps Already?

Tonight Shasta walked down the steps to the back yard for the first time.  She gone up the steps since day one, today was the first time she tried to go down the steps and did so without stumbling.  Now we have to make sure she doesn't try to jump from the retaining wall part of the steps.  Always a scary transition with a puppy.

We loaded up the clicker a couple of more times tonight.  I thought she was correlating it tonight, that the treat came because of the click.

From the pictures, one would think she is always sleeping.  That is definitely not the case.  But that's when the pictures are easiest to take!

Take Your Puppy to Work Day

Shasta made the trip downtown to see people at Gray Plant.  She handled it all great, the crush of people to see her in the conference room, everyone bending over and reaching for her, none of it bothered her at all.  It was great to see.

We had to park three blocks away, it was also fascinating to see the looks of everyone on Nicollet Avenue Mall in the middle of the afternoon as we walked to the IDS.  Lots of cute dog comments from all walks of life that you see on Nicollet!