Saturday I was too beat to blog

 

In an attempt to "save" the bottom step from Ember's teeth, I changed the location of one of the baby gates.  This also helps with the overall containment where she was slipping out and back in the "other side" of the X-Pen.  The furry one keeps me on my toes, and that's a fact.

She turned 7 months old on Saturday.  

Saturday morning, I managed to over-excite Ember.  Hungry, tired, over-excited... all up the likelihood of biting incidents.  In this particular biting incident, it started relatively innocently but turned into a "tug" game with my sweatshirt as the toy.  My attempts at using the bite protocol were only partially successful.  Three new bandaids.  But I do celebrate progress.  This was the first time in three days I needed any for new wounds.

Sunday starts September; it's high time for Ember to learn that outerwear (sweatshirts, jackets, gloves, and different shoes or boots) is normal human stuff and should be white noise, a part of the person wearing them (or putting them on, taking them off, storing them).  They have nothing to do with her.  Wish me luck with this one, as it's been a problem from day one.

As I get the configuration of Ember's containment system finalized, she is adapting to it.  Sunday noon, I put her in the X-Pen while I prepared the Greek Salad that will be going to the family gather at 4 p.m.  She whined some, but settled down to play with her squeaky toy, and a chew bone, too.  I got her out when "her" salad was ready for lunch time. When she finished that, I fed her half of her breakfast left-behind kibble.  The rest of the breakfast kibble went into a Kong that she got in the big crate for puppy nap #2.

No bites Sunday, so far.  I am getting good feedback from the coaches about my training plans and the short videos I have shared.  It's a pain in the tail taking them and editing them down to the one minute or less clips.  I have pretty much abandoned the tripod.  Most of the time my phone is just my phone, and to set up the tripod and get the weight balance of the phone right, and all that is just too much for me!

Sunday's giggle:  After puppy nap #1, Ember and I play the ItsYerChoice game with her portion of my banana.  Today I took it out on the patio, and we played in the back yard (part of generalizing a lesson is to do it in multiple locations around the house).  She did great.  Then at the end of the game, she noticed my shoelace had come untied.  To distract her from that, I set the Corelle cup that had held the banana pieces on the ground and told her it was "chow".  This cue lets her eat whatever's in the container, and all that was there was banana residue.  But she (being a retriever, of course) picked up the cup and trotted around with it in her mouth.  

I tied my shoe and went into the house to wash my hands.  She followed me in, but no cup.  I hadn't heard it break, so went out to look and found a puddle on the deck, and a little bit of yellow fluid in the bottom of the cup on the top step!  My puppy peed in a cup!  I got the giggles.  No, she wasn't picked up for drug testing!  My only regret is that I didn't take a photo while the cup was sitting there with the urine in it!  It had already been taken inside and washed up as I laughed.

That's it for today from Emberville!  At the BBQ this evening we will see if the pups have the energy and focus to play the "Call Once" game!  I have the instructions and five baggies with high value treats already packed into the car, in case of opportunity.

Life is good.  Keep on Sparking!