Zooka's 24th month of life, April 2021, ends with hitting his 2nd birthday! He still seems like our baby boy, but he's creeping closer to maturity.

Vizslas have a tendency to be a bit on the slower side to maturing. And you might have heard that boys can be slower to mature than girls. So is Zooka an adult at two years old? Some would say yes. I would say it will be another year and possibly a bit more before he reaches full maturity.

Romeo, our previous Vizsla, really didn't hit full maturity until he was between three and four years old. So I would say that Zooka is no longer a puppy, but more like a young adult. Some young adults are mature and some, well, some have a bit more growing up to do. Everyone is a bit different, right?

So during Zooka's 24th month we worked hard at getting out more. Our goal was to get back to hiking and to start getting Zooka back out in the “real world” and get Blitzen exposed since we spent the winter pretty much stuck at home. Between Blitzen's initial pain issues and restricted activity, then Sue's injury and recovery, and the snowstorms, we were not getting out at all for a few months.

Finally, we were able to start getting out and doing some short hikes close to home. We started getting out to the local parks.

We discovered that after being cooped up at home for about four months, Zooka's leash manners and listening skills in public needed some refreshing!

That is the polite way of saying that he pretty much did not listen on his first outing. He was doing a lot of pulling on leash and a lot of tuning out because he was so excited to be out and away from home. Ugh! While we do some leash work at home, most of his walks at home are off leash. And he does really well most of the time.

As we keep getting out, he does better. But it was a definitely not a smooth transition back into passing by and seeing other people and dogs.

Meanwhile, recently, he also had taken up chasing airplanes (and the occasional helicopter). Now, Vizslas are bird dogs, so technically, perhaps you could classify the planes as giant birds. . . But that's definitely something we are working on curbing. Chasing airplanes is not any more acceptable than chasing cars. It is not an acceptable outlet for his desire to chase moving objects.

He continues to do well with his brother Blitzen. They play together every day. They do well the vast majority of the time. Though sometimes his brother gets upset about something and threatens to escalate into a fight. So far, no fights. So far, we have been able to intervene and calm everyone down. Zooka never starts it. Zooka never escalates it. But he does stand his ground. So far, it never escalates beyond the growling and posturing.

We are working on de-escalating those times, and usually it's pretty easy to redirect and get everyone calmed down. Once in a while, it's harder to get them to walk away. But we have had zero fights and our intent is to keep it that way.

We have more work to do to get Zooka as reliable as I want him to be. I have not had as much time to work with him since I have been somewhat focused on Blitzen the past few months. Hopefully I can get back to spending more time with Zooka on his training so over the next year we can get more reliable and turn him into the mature reliable man I expect him to be by the time he's fully mature.

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