9 weeks - Trips and training

Overexposed in afternoon sun, but still cute! 9 weeks 4 days old

Rye had a fun week.

Training practice:

- Reorienting points: Going through doorways, having your leash removed and coming out of the crate are all reorienting points.

- Name recognition: Lots of tug and verbal praise for name recognition. Coming along very nicely.

- Introduced tug-release-sit-tug sequences. Worked on this x 3 this week. Video below of our first training session on this.

- Nose-touch on my hand reintroduced after 2 week break. Going well.

- Introducing the cue "Visit" when I want him to have permission to visit a person.


Places we went (other than to work every day):

1) Field trip to PetSmart Friday and Reber Ranch Sunday:
- Check out the automatic sliding doors (no worries) and rest of the store
- Meet about 20 strangers
- Get fitted for a harness (I like harnesses for long pleasure walks for pups)
- Pick out some treats and a toy

2) City walk in downtown Renton:
- Wait in the car alone with no other dogs x 2 hrs
- Ride in the car with no other dogs
- Cars
- Buses
- Garbage truck, semi
- Many, many pedestrians

3) Trip to Luther Burbank Park:
- Treats for waves crashing on the docks
- Treats for other dogs barking/growling on the other side of a fence
- Longest leash walk so far to test out the harness
- Meet cousin "Cowboy" and Aunt Kim

4) Trip to sheepdog trial:
- Met about 40 new people
- Whistles, 4-wheelers, creek, tall grass, lots of mud (he was NOT sure about mud)
- Played tug-release-sit with 40mph winds, blowing tarp overhead, sheep behind the fence and loose dogs running around. Very successful
- Watched sheep go by behind fence (oooohhhhhh very exciting)
- Met a number of friendly new dogs

Rye holding his fox pelt toy... watching something intently. Whatcha watchin' boy?

Ahhhhh.... sheepies!

5) Trip to training center:

I have been holding off doing much training with Rye because I wanted to use him to demonstrate a few behaviors on a completely green dog in my week 2 beginning class this week. It was a BIG success.

- Learned we need to work on individual crating with no other beings in the room (ie no other crated dogs and no people)
- Was the demo dog for eye contact, sit/reward/release and luring into a front-first down.
- Did tug-release-sits for a new person
- Got treats for being barked at by another dog

Here is some video of his first ever session of tug-release-sit-tug



Overall Rye had a good week. He is about 90% or better on his house training as of today. About one accident every 2 days. Still sleeping through the night quite soundly and his gut is all cleared up which is a big relief. Since his gut is cleared up he is back on his regular food and I introduced a food toy for the first time with tonight's dinner (Kibble Nibble Ball by Premier). He took a bit to work it out but greatly enjoyed playing with his food.

He also got to practice some of his moves on Aunt Lora's sheep.

The double-paw pounce

Fighting dirty - the ear grab

And the ever-important nose grip!

I am really, really enjoying having Rye. It has been nearly 12 years since I had a herding breed puppy of my own and it is a ton of fun. I am treasuring his youth as I know the teenage time will not be as fun for either of us. In the meantime, he is just peachy!