Well, its been hectic around here. Zen is still going to work with me and waiting in the car. I come out about 4 times a day to potty him and let him stretch his legs. The only days he is in there a full 8 hrs are Mondays and Fridays. That's about to change. I went and talked to the people at the dog daycare yesterday. They normally don't take dogs under 6 months but said they would take him. Zen is going to go to Doggie Daycare on Mondays and Fridays so he doesn't have to stay crated so long. Well, as long as he likes it there and it works out ok. I hope he will like it because I feel a little guilty keeping him cooped up that many hours, at least while he is young. My other dogs stay crated no problem, but I know they can hold it all day. Plus, while he sees plenty of people out walking in the parking lot during the day, its really a minimal amount of socialization compared to playing with other dogs.
I have been really working on shaping behaviors lately. I NEED to start naming them. It's just so overwhelming. We are working on a back up, frog, crawl, wave, beg, back foot awareness, spin left or right, get the newspaper, doggy yoga, baby cavaletti stuff for more awareness of his feet, all four feet on something. I want to add duration to his down. His sit is pretty good. I never taught Rumor a formal "wait" or "stay" like I did with Carrie. Sit means sit until I say ok. Might be a little useful. I want to improve his mat work and transfer that to a chair also. Plus more crate games. He is fine crated in the car or van, but he barks in the crate in my room when I go shower in the morning, or if I just leave him in there and walk out. The crate games have helped some, and I have really done a minimal of work with them, so I need to get on it. I feel like he has so much to learn and I have so little time sometimes. I want him to learn everything fully and be able to put it to use with distractions etc.
His weird behavior is barking at people while we are out at night. I'm not exactly sure why. Some of it is probably that we don't have much foot traffic in our neighborhood. I always walk after the sun goes down or before it comes up. We almost never see anyone on our walks, which I kind of like, but then when we do see someone he will bark. Right now I'm treating it as a fear behavior and asking for attention before he has time to react then rewarding. I'm going to work on this by taking him out to the park around dusk and doing some walking out there. I don't know if it will transfer to our neighborhood, but it can't hurt. Also, on nice nights taking him up to Starbucks to sit around.
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