Keeping It Real

Our Trainer has always made it clear that our puppies need to be able to snuggle and lay quietly with people, and if furniture is being used to cuddle, then the puppies must only lay upon it when asked. Every puppy needs to know the difference. How you train that is not that hard. A firm No when the puppy volunteers to jump upon the furniture, and then a happy and encouraging Yes once it gets upon after being commanded to do so.

When Kolby was little we had a dickens of a time getting him to stay Off the couch. He had formed a great habit of running through the house with his squeaky toy blazing wildly before he would take a flying leap onto the couch, pause, wait for an audience to form, and then immediately jump off, back to running through the house at lightening speed, only to find himself back on the couch before any of us could get his attention to "stop already!".

This was a long ordeal that I had to embarrassingly admit to when I dropped him off with his first Puppy Sitters. But, thankfully, they took it very seriously as well, and Mister has not performed this Flying Leap Antic since his return home from his week's vacation (way back in July). Hooray!!

So, the concept of staying off until commanded has finally settled into Kolby and he is giving a perfect 10 performance at staying off all furnitures unless asked.

Just this week in Puppy Class, we were all cheering for Kolby, giving him mighty praises for his great turn around in maturity, when yesterday my girl had just put her feet up on the couch from a long day at school, and I had sat on the arm of our big comfy chair to chat about her day while Mister gave me the eager, willful, sweet, puppy-dog-face that he is so famous for - the one that says, "Attention, please?"

I patted my lap and said, "Kolby, Lap!" ... to which the proper response would be for him to put his two front legs over the top of my lap, keeping his two back legs standing on the ground. Easy. He has done this a bazillion times since he was old enough to reach my lap (which for him was just shy of 3 months old due to his long legs!).

All of a sudden, my focused puppy did a complete Jump and all Four legs came bounding in the air and I had no reaction but to Catch My 67 Pound Puppy in Mid-Air!! Voila!! And then there he sat upon my Lap without moving yet perfectly relaxed, not necessarily shocked by his actions, but more as if to say, "This IS the command you wanted, right?" My girl immediately snapped a photo (because after all, a smartphone is never far from any teenage girl).

Side note:

Kolby has long ears. The longest ears short of a Coonhound I have ever seen. But with that comes some work at keeping them clean and free of infection. So far so good with Kolby, but today as I was cleaning, he let out a yelp. So I paused, changed ears, and all was fine. I went back to the other and he let out another whimper. I immediately scheduled an appointment with the Doc to be sure to get him in before our busy weekend, and sure enough, our Mister has his first ear infection and it is a hefty one. For it to be "this bad" without a prior complaint, means my boy is mighty tough. I now have a great ear wash product to use once the current meds are complete to keep those ears squeaky-clean. Kolby is on the road to recovery.