Look At That…by Lisa Harmon June 11, 2008

Kenai and his wildflower patch, 23 weeks old

We have a brazen spike buck that lingers in the field. Okay, we have two, but one of them is an actual deer. He’s there each morning and evening, nibbling away. Kenai stands and stares at him, and the deer stares back at Kenai for awhile, then returns to munching. I’d give anything to know what they were thinking about each other!

Since I don’t know what they’re thinking, I’ll just make it up and enjoy the dialogue…(Deer) “Boy that one’s puny”, “Grow up kid, before you try taking my field”, “How’d he get his face blackened?”. (Kenai) “He has 4 ears, only 2 of them are taped”, “How’d he get so big?”, “Talk about skinny legs”, “Why’s he eating trees?”

Our critter encounters are good practice for the “Look At That” game, from the book, “Control Unleashed”. He’s never pulled or tried to go chase anything (he always goes out on a leash). But Kenai gets transfixed and I sort of vanish into the less visited regions of his brain! Stimulation but not wild or reactive is how Kenai responds to animals other than dogs.

I still have to quietly get Kenai’s attention at times to click and reward, which isn’t part of the technique. But he’s looking back at me more often on his own when he sees something thrilling to his puppy brain. He will follow the “lets go” command to walk back to the house without any trouble, deer or no deer. If he looks back at the deer, he gets another click and treat when he turns back to me.

I’ve been so much happier with our outside field runs since we started using the exercises in the CU book, and having little “practices” before I unleash him. I don’t get concerned when he’s absorbed in the smells of something, because I know he will turn and do a zoomie right back to me soon, running to the delighted sound of a clicker.

I’m enjoying it again. We can stick in a “come front” here and there while playing. I can laugh at him and unusually only have to get close enough for a leave it once or twice. The playtime is paradoxically more structured, yet a lot more relaxed!

Monday was a tough afternoon for Kenai. It started off with untaping and cleaning his ears, then moved on to toenail clipping. He tolerates it, but doesn’t like it at all: patient but pouty. The ear massage and baby powder on his tummy afterwards seems to make it worth the indignity, though. He had to nap after all that.

Evening wasn’t much better: We were downstairs, and those two knucklehead littermates were after each other’s toys and parts and I got really tired of the teeth, ya know? It’s not always ugly though. Sometimes they can crack you up, before you have to scold them.

Kenai may have figured out a way to settle the disputes without getting in too much trouble: Tuesday afternoon, BB was biting his butt so Kenai stood up, and sat on his brother’s head! Pirate puppy became pancake head…the really funny thing was BB didn’t move for about 10 seconds.

He just lay there, lanky legs hanging out to the sides, his entire head smushed into the couch cushions by an 80 pound sack of puppy concrete. I was laughing too hard to be convincing with my displeasure. Talk about a “look at that”! You know BB was trying to decide how his butt biting game had gone so horribly wrong…

So like most people, I’ve got some success and some struggle going on! I really am glad to have this blog, because it makes me put the “stuff” in perspective, and consider more carefully what I feel. We all have a tendency to shoot off our mouths, myself included. Writing about Kenai’s life makes me think about it more objectively. And it records the good stuff, too. Everyone needs a record of their success to look back on and gain confidence from, right?

It’d be brilliant if I could reach a point where I could walk into the room every time and have this calming strong energy that just settled the dogs down. Wouldn’t it be great if I was a dazzling and luminous Dog Whisperer? Ah well, I have to work at it: try this, try that, and find what works best. Except for sitting on their heads…

The boys are now 23 wks old, and it seems my week long streak of bad luck with the camera has gone away for awhile. There are times I can’t get a decent pic of Kenai to save my hide, and then there are times I can’t get a bad one. It’s not skill on my part: I’m a point and click kinda girl, and glad that digitals can just be deleted instead of burning all that film. So along with a nice crop of volunteer daisies out back, I got a nice crop of pics for Kenai and BB’s blogs.

I must confess to being lax with my concrete butt boy’s service dog outings the past few days. It’s gotten seriously hot and humid here, and his tummy troubles have resurfaced again. So we’ve just been hanging out alot. I can’t start his weight bearing task training until he’s 18 months old, and considering he’s not quite 6 months, I’ll grant myself the slow and easy pace of this week.

I know, I know, consistancy and frequency is drilled into puppy training heads but honestly, Kenai is doing fine. His group class starts next week, and I have no doubt that he knows his commands. Class is for fun, and for socialization. With training service dogs, slow is fast. Do it once, do it right, and that only happens by taking the time.

Besides, it’s summer, and they aren’t called the “lazy, dog days” for nothing!

Human learning doesn’t run at a steady and unchangeable pace, and neither does puppy learning. They learn as they grow: in spurts. Dog’s aren’t grown until at least 2 years old, so what’s the horrendous rush to have their Good Canine Citizen test passed at 8 or 9 months old? If Kenai is 7 months or 10 months, he’s still got ALOT of time after that before the “in training” patch comes off.

We got time…