apple juice

Yes, it’s again that time of the week. Puppy class. I’ll have a full report tonight or tomorrow… I’m contemplating taking the camera along for some action shots…

It will be interesting to see how Yeti reacts since she will now be one of the larger dogs there. She has been on the whole better in recent weeks, but I jinxed myself by mentioning to Sonja that she hadn’t chewed through any of the furniture yet. And whatddya know? Later that night, a quiet grinding noise caught my attention, and I raced up the stairs to find a puppy, some sawdust and chips, and a slightly injured kitchen chair. “Ha! That’ll teach us to neglect me!” Yeti says under her puppy-breath. I seem to remember another puppy from my life doing the exact same thing…

Anyways, ReplayTV is ready to go, scrubs and friends are all set! Puppies here we go!

stepping carefully
old shoes on tentative feet
yard filled with dog poo

Well, we had puppy class #2 last night, and once again, a very interesting experience. I could see how someone could get very interested in a behavioral science kind of way with the way dogs interact with each other. For instance, our dog is a total wuss. Since there was about half the number of people this week, after completing pass-the-puppy again, (I had to hold two pugs this time, Obi, from last time, and Lucy, the grunter) we let the dogs loose to run around in the lobby of the veternarian.

Yeti, being the explorer that she is, did a perimeter run around the entire place, avoiding the dogs that were playing in a group in the middle of the area. I picked her up and plopped her down near the pack, so she would get a little play time in, she ran behind me. Repeat. Third time, she found a dog that was half her size to pick on. As she’s doing her butt in the air growl, Molly, a 30 pound lab, knocks her down, Yeti quickly gets up and runs over to some little girls that were reading books. They love her up.

I go and grab her since the whole point of this is to socialize her with other dogs. (She has no problem with people, during pass-the-puppy we get all these comments about how nice our dog is, how amazing it is that she comes when she’s called, how she sits for us) So back to the smaller dogs she can pick on. Bigger dogs come, she runs.

This will get better, I’m sure. A couple more of these puppy classes and she’ll be good.

The Number One thing we learned at puppy class. The shaker jar. Soup Can. Pennies. Duct Tape. The best way to keep your dog away from the Christmas tree (your toes, the antique coffee table, etc.) When she is doing something bad, shake the jar, and tell her no… She’s already responding better to a simple No! since I made the jar last night.

Major Bonus points for: Sitting at the entrance of the vet when she wanted to go out to the bathroom. Following the path I shoveled in the snow out to the back corner of our yard and then sitting still on the blanket when she came back in while I got her a treat and wiped her feet off.

She loves the snow!

Yeti had her first puppy class last night. Here’s the scene. 30 puppies of varying sizes and breeds. Harried owners trying to keep the leashes untangled. Mass chaos. One vet trying to to talk over the yelps and barks, letting us know if it’s okay if the puppy eats their poo. (Yeti doesn’t by the way, someone else asked the question)

So what did we learn? Not a ton that we didn’t know already, but we did get to see Yeti in action with some other dogs. She mostly hid under the bench we were sitting on, until the dogs around her stopped paying attention. Then she would slowly venture out and try to sniff some butts.

I think we picked the right dog though. At one point, there was about 4 or 5 dogs in a tangled mess, running in circles, barking, and Yeti decided it might be a nice time for a little nap in the middle of all this. However, it didn’t last long. A big Golden Retriever sat on her head, but anyways, it’s nice to know she’s pretty laid back.

We’ll try again next week, maybe it’ll be a little less nuts. I think there were extra people trying to get some extra tips on good puppy behavior before the Thanksgiving holiday.

One thing I can be thankful for is not getting a Pug. At one point we were supposed to pass the puppies around so they would get used to different people. Well, of course, about the third dog to come around was a Pug. About two seconds after it sat down on my lap, it either snorted extremely loud, or farted, and not wanting to get a second opinion, I passed it right along.

Well, well well, what’s this? A puddle? Yeti has figured out one sure way to get our attention. Pee on the floor! We’ve kinda decided that she is to stay in the kitchen unless we are explicitly watching her. This works great, however, there is about a 15 minute span in the morning (about 7:20 to 7:35) where I am in the shower, getting dressed, and generally not paying attention to the Yeti-monster. Well she doesn’t like that one bit, so I guess peeing on the floor seems like a good plan to her. Today’s puddle broke the 3-day no-accident streak we were on, but nonetheless, things are looking up.

On a side note, what am I supposed to do when this happens? I believe I’m supposed to put her outside, no scolding (cause I didn’t catch her in the act) just clean up the mess and let her back in as if nothing has happened. But is she going to learn anything from this? Everytime she goes out she expects a treat now. (Bad A.J.! Bad A.J.!) I think we’re going to have to rework the whole going outside/pottie/treat experience. Maybe we’ll ask at puppy class tonight.

This all kind of reminds me of a book I used to read when I was younger. It was in the Soup series, but I forget which one it was. Soup on Fire maybe? Anyways, Soup and Rob are talking about owning a ranch, and Soup says that he’d fly down in his biplane (it’s set in the 30’s) to Rob’s ranch to visit.

“And you know how I’d get your attention? I’d pee out the window!”

Which I always used to think was so hilarious! Anytime you needed some attention, just pee on something! Flying by in a plane, just pee out the window!

I’m no longer thinking it’s quite so hilarious…