Day 57

It has been way to cold to introduce Hops to water via lakes so we took him to a doggie pool today for his first swim. He was not thrilled with the idea but he swam quite a bit. He started in Beth’s arms then she carried him away from me and let him swim back to me. I then walked the periphery of the pool and he followed along swimming (with Beth right there with him), then Rice and Dillon and Jeremiah and I joined him in the pool and all played. Hops was very interested in the boys retrieving and even jumped off of his perch to swim after the boys all on his own many times. At first he was not interested in toys but he was soon reaching for and carrying a toy as soon as he started swimming. Good puppy!

 

 

 

Jeremiah turned around earlier to see Hops riding Rice like a horse! Crazy puppy!

 

We started his first lesson today with backing up. I started with having him back to a 2 inch box and had him backing to an 8 inch box very quickly. We then practiced going around a tall stool with me sending him ahead of me then running away in the other direction. Some of the time he turned to follow me before going around the stool but most of the time he made it around before digging in and running to me. He was also running in a straight line to me as soon as he cleared the stool. Then he did perch work on a balance disk then he offered to get all four feet on the disk several times. Pushups while in heel on the right side was next (he did great) followed by getting in and on a bowl which he was much better at than the mast time.

 

For the rest of his dinner, Hops did a roll then it’s your choice session. After giving the hand signal a few times Hops started rolling on the verbal cue! Good puppy! He only rolls counter clockwise on his own though. He started offering to roll over so much I started to mix in other cues like sit, down, stand and face so he was rolling on cue, not just rolling. He did great with that, doing the other behaviors easily and still rolling on cue after. To end I practiced being able to have treats on the ground near Hops without him taking them and I ended up lining kibble up on his front legs. He was such a good puppy! Not trying to steal the kibble just waiting for his release cue to snatch them all up!