Zooka turns ONE YEAR OLD on May 1st, 2020! His 12th month of life was a bit of a strange month in the world. Most of us were under stay-at-home orders due to the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the world.

While we still have plenty of training and socializing to do, we are happy with the young man he is turning out to be. He does not always listen as well as we would like. He does not always make the best decisions. But over all he is a very good boy. And the rest of that will come with additional time AND training AND practice.

Over all, though, he has a wonderful easy-going temperament. We have never seen a single sign of aggressive behavior from him. (Well, the bunnies he pursues might feel differently.) He has never shown any signs of aggression over food, toys, with other dogs or toward people.

The pandemic has meant that we have not been able to get out in public and work on our manners in those settings as we want to be doing at this stage. This is especially tough for those with younger puppies right now. Socializing your dog is hard when you are supposed to be keeping your distance from everyone else. But we do our best.

We were still able to get some socializing with other dogs during this time though not as often as we normally would. Due to limitations from the pandemic, most people had to cancel travel plans, whether it was a spring break vacation or a business trip or something else. So we have had very few boarders here during this time.

We have been able to set up a few play dates since we are able to spread out and keep our distance and let the dogs play. Zooka has been very happy for the play dates he has had, all with friends he has had play dates with previously.

Being home more and not able to get out to appointments has meant spending more time with Zooka. Which he is all in favor of! But we have also noticed that when we did need to kennel him while gone, we clearly have lapsed somewhat in his tolerance of being alone. We did have a bit of destruction one afternoon despite the fact that he was only left for ONE HOUR and HE HAD A COMPANION in the kennel next to him. So we will be doing more work on his crate training again. . .

We have been continuing his training at home with things like Sit, Down, Wait, Stay, etc. We have been continuing our efforts to teach AROUND and he is now able to go around a chair or a vacuum cleaner or such from about 6 feet away. We still need to work on this outdoors with objects and start getting greater distances, but he is doing well with what we have done so far.

We have also just started teaching STRETCH. (Some people might call this “bow” but we think that sounds too much like “down” so we call it Stretch.) This is the position with front end down, butt in the air. Think of when your dog stretches when getting up from a nap. That's what I am looking for. I find this one works really well when I need to help a dog calm down or relax a bit. The position is associated with relaxation and a general feeling of calm typically.

In addition to our solo training, I am also working with him a bit when training with our foster Greyhound, Presley. It's good practice for him to learn to wait his turn and to work in tandem with someone else rather than all the attention focused solely on him. He is doing well with this. (Presley, on the other hand, needs a lot of work on waiting his turn, but he is learning!)

The other thing we have been doing more of is working with food dispensing puzzle toys. Since he is not getting the stimulation of outings and working around others in public, we need to make sure he is getting stimulation in other ways. He loves working his puzzle toys, so this is one additional way to add some extra brain work to his routine.

We are pleased with what a nice young man our Zooka is. We are excited to see what the next year brings us!

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