Fun New Naughtiness and Other Things

Well, apparently, Jun's drugs are making her hungry. She has never been a counter-surfer, but over the past few weeks she has eaten a TON of stuff that I thought was left WELL out of her reach. Apparently she is more determined than I thought, and now every time I turn my back she is up on the counters. No more leaving food out, I suppose. She has also gained a little weight from all the food she managed to steal, so now she's on a diet as well. I'm sure she is thrilled about that.

I am not really sure how much the meds are helping her. It's been four weeks now, and so hard to be patient. She is still a lot calmer in the house. Other than that, nothing seems to have improved. She is barking again. Last night she spent half the night barking and also ripped up a roll of toilet paper in the bathroom.She hasn't barked at night since we lowered her Sertraline dose, so I'm not sure what her deal was. She has also never in the past month touched anything in there that wasn't hers. I know she was feeling panicky, but there is nothing I can do about it. If I leave her loose she will just pace and not sleep. Poor girl must be tired.

She's doing great with Relaxation Protocol. Doing ok with walks. Windy days suck, for both her and Elo, I have found. The wind must bring so many more smells than they usually have to deal with. Jun gets all anxious again and has trouble focusing. Elo just gets a little crazy and is all over the place. Gotta love his enthuisiasm for life though!

I have gotten kind of bored with training. Without a solid goal to work towards, I become a terrible trainer. I wish I could have the dogs in some type of class, so I would have some structure. Since I am sick of all the other stuff I was working on, I decided to start training Jun and Elo together. We do this every once in awhile, but I'd like to really ramp up the difficulty level, e.g., heeling one dog around the other while they are in a stay, etc. They did really well! I put them on separate mats across the room and worked one at a time on just basic stuff. It works out great, since Jun only knows hand signals and Elo only knows verbals. As long as I'm not gesturing to Elo to try to get him to do what I want, there is no confusion! I tried to train Elo and and Lok together once and it was chaos. Neither understood the concept of following only commands that were specifically addressed to them. And Lok gets frustrated so easily that I never really followed up. I think not being able to see me makes it harder for him too.

We have also not been getting to the park much this summer, due to Jun's issues, so I haven't been able to work her toss and catch much or distance at all. And if the dogs don't go to the park, I don't usually go by myself, so I haven't been throwing as much as I should be. We work freestyle in the yard maybe once a week. Short TC in the yard once a week. Next competition is in 16 days in Missouri---Quad and AWI qualifier. This was our best competition of the year last year! Our best FS round ever, and our first time making the finals in the Quad. I don't know what I can expect this year since we haven't been working much, but we will have fun for sure, at least.