Puppy class No. 3 and one exhausted little girl

We forgot to take pictures last night, so this is from class no. 2. 

Just picture Rosie a tiny bit bigger, and a tiny bit better behaved.

During the first play time period in puppy kindergarten last night, a woman who owns one of the more timid dogs said to me, "Rosie's being so good tonight! What did you do?" Then she had the grace to look abashed.

She was right--Rosie was being good--but of course Rosie is two weeks older than when she started, and is bigger, and has become more confident and knows her name better and knows us better and none of this was unexpected, was it? Still, I wondered if Rosie had gained a reputation as a hellion.  She really isn't.

The truth is, she can only take about 45 minutes of class before her attention span is shot, she's tired and thirsty, and everything kind of goes to hell. So it might be that the woman might not have been thinking the same thing at the end of class that she was at the beginning of class.  But she was right that Rosie has made progress.

She's great at knowing her name. She plays a little more gently with the other dogs (but only a little).  She did really well practicing SIT; not so well with DOWN (lie down). her head would go down only to have her butt go up. So the instructor taught us how to make her wriggle under a bridge of our legs in order to get the treat--she has to lie down on her belly to worm her way underneath.

The last fifteen minutes weren't quite so great. During "play-with-your-jailers" time, she had no interest in us but wanted to play with the other dogs (all of whom were interacting happily with their own personal jailers) and then during the last five minutes when all the dogs were in the soothing hold, she complained a lot.

Plotting her escape during the soothing hold

Fortunately, Doug was with us again this time and he's better at the soothing hold than I am, so it wasn't too bad. I dread next week, the last class, when he's out of town and I must go it alone.

We have already signed her up for Obedience 1, but it doesn't start until mid-May. I think we'll be doing a lot of homeschooling between now and then.

After class we went home and I did what I could to keep her awake until 9 p.m.  One last pee and she was down for the count until 5:30 a.m. Ah, bliss....