Zooka turned 18 months – one-and-a-half years old! The month of October 2020 was mostly one of steady progress forward. But as you all know, progress is never completely a straight line forward. It often looks like two steps forward and one step back.

Zooka has been doing very well with his at-home walks. One morning, Zooka and I started out our walk down our south driveway per usual. Just as we were about to turn and loop through our field, we spotted a few deer just on the other side of the fence. I spotted them just before Zooka did, and as soon as he spotted them, I said WAIT. (Remember, he is OFF leash when we are on this walk.)

I was not sure whether he would wait as instructed or if he would try to chase. We were fairly close to the deer. He, in fact, DID wait. The deer started to move away  (not running, but faster than a walk) as we watched. Once they got a bit further away, I released Zooka to GO. (Only because they were already on the other side of the fence.) He ran over to the fence and ran along the fence line a bit. He was a VERY GOOD BOY!

Our outings this month were a mix of good and not-so-great. Normally, when he spots other dogs (that we do not know),  his tendency is to stop, plant himself in a sit, and stare. He is very difficult to move away. But he normally does not lunge or bark. Well, hanging out with a few of his friends in Polite Pooches Class has taught him that sometimes one of them gets excited and does bark and perhaps lunge. So he has done that a few times now.

This behavior needs to change, of course. We need to be polite when others pass by. Unfortunately, we have not been getting enough practice in with this. This will get better when we work on it more. I do not mind him watching (to some extent) if he is being calm. But we need to learn how to listen when other dogs walk by and certainly not get into any bad habits that include barking and/or lunging.

It's not unusual to go through a bit of this during adolescence, so I am not terribly worried about it. But I need to stay on top of it and make sure it is just a phase that we pass through. And the sooner the better.

We did have a vet visit this month and were supposed to get some blood drawn. While Zooka has never shown any signs of aggression or any signs that he would bite, he was not able to cooperate with us and hold still long enough for a blood draw. This is something we need to work on. He was nervous going into the vet's office. He was worried about the floor being slippery. While this is occasionally an issue, it seemed to be a much more significant issue this time, and has been following this.

Since things shut down and most vet offices were not allowing clients inside with their dogs (and most still are not) this has been an issue for us. Normally, I would have been doing some “happy visits” with him before going in for a blood draw or other procedures. But we have not been able to do this. So we have not been able to work on getting more comfortable in the vet's office and being handled by the vet techs.

He does not try to bite or display any aggression, he simply will not hold still. And you do need to hold still for a bit to get a blood draw done. So this is something we need to work on and figure out. This will be easier to work on once things open up again and clients can enter vet offices again so we can practice lots of happy visits during slow times at the clinic.

Our other training has been holding mostly steady. Any lack of moving forward is totally on me, of course. Either because I get super busy helping everyone else train their dogs and do not put enough focus on my own training or I just get lazy and keep on with what we are doing and not being cognizant of pushing forward on things. Yep, I get lazy with my training sometimes too!

But the main thing is that he is a joy to be around, he has a great temperament, and we enjoy spending time together. If my training takes a bit longer than I wanted because I am not being as diligent, that is ok taking a back seat to making sure we are having fun together every single day.

And we do have fun together every single day!

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