Wednesday wobbles

A lot of the roller coaster of dog training is the roller coaster of personal energy, or lack thereof.  Today's flops involved the trash can attempts, the muddy mat at the back door attempt, and an impulse buy of bound carpet mats that were immediately attacked by the land shark in my home.

Another aspect was an attempt to let her see the old fuzzy dog bed, which she also eviscerated.

When I had that fuzzy donut outside the X-Pen, she not only barked at its absence, but she jumped one of the baby gates to get to it, so I tossed it back inside the Xpen, where she proceeded to take out her aggression on it before settling down.  

Yes, we have reached the second stage of baby gate breaches.  She tips them over, then jumps into the blocked off room.

The plus side is that the carpet mats were very cheap, thus the impulse.  The fuzzy donut is now in the trash, as is the first of the two carpet mats.  She has not been exposed to the second one.

Two dog beds arrived on my doorstep on Wednesday.  This one is bolstered, the other one is raised.  I have hopes of them eventually becoming "hot zones" for Ember, but after her performance today surrounding the fluffy / furry donut one?  I have my doubts.  I'm going to keep them hopefully out of harm's way until I get to the lessons that show how to transition to beds from towels on the floor.

That was the plan.  She jumped the gate to go "visit" them.  I distracted her away, in the end, with a game of chase.  Staying a few steps ahead of her is likely not in the long-term cards.

Alicia came over and we had the wins of the day.  Before she arrived, I put Ember into her harness.  Or I should say, Ember was very calm and didn't offer any resistance at all, and the harness went on smoothly.  We waited outside while Alicia drove up, and had a "pretty fair" greeting, Ember earning her ear scritches from our guest with a pretty little sit.

We had a calm pack walk, and even greeted a passing pedestrian nicely, gaining praise from him.  When we got home, she went to bed pretty smoothly after a bit too.  I figured she earned a "last call" about 7:30 p.m., and even that went well.  So yes, ups, downs, wobbles... but Life is Good!  Keep Sparking, my friends!