Day 34

Went to the Vet this morning and that spot on her nose is definitely healing. Sure wish I knew just where she stuck her nose that she shouldn't. Ah well, the good part is that the more weekly trips to the Vet's office the better as far as training goes.

We are practicing doing a down/stay under my chair. Now that means she is having to learn to sit with her back to me and positioned between my legs and then do a down and let me slide her back until she is under the chair. As time goes on she will learn how to creep backwards under the chair without my help. She is getting to practice her "place" command by getting up on the scales on command and then holding a sit so we check her weight. She is up to 35 pounds now and not an ounce of it is fat.

Since I didn't have to rush home to teach a lesson, we took the opportunity to stop and shop at PetCo. This was Sanity's first visit. What a hoot. I do love the first shopping trip with a new pup. It always tells me so much about their character and how they are more than likely to grow out. In this case, Sanity hopped out of the car, trotted pretty much in heel position right through the door and then stopped dead in her tracks.

The eyes grew very large. The nose was going a mile a minute. The ears were standing as tall as she could stretch them and swiveling in two different directions at once. After pausing for a couple of minutes to allow her to gather her self, we started off on a tour of the entire store. Aisle by aisle we worked our way around the animal side. She needed to sniff, touch, taste just about everything within reach. Towards the end of the trip all took her down the rawhide chew aisle and let her pick a chew just for herself. The deal was, if she was to have said chew for herself she was going to have to carry it to the check out counter, give it up while I paid for it and then carry it all the way to the car. Trust me, that was really hard work.

The chew stayed in her mouth and she managed to carry it about 10 steps and then she just had to stop and take a bite. Then we managed maybe 20 steps and the drool coming from the sides of her mouth caused her to drop the chew and after licking her lips she had to take another bite. In this slow fashion we worked our way to the check out counter. The chew was greatly reduced in size by the time it made its way to the counter. After paying it went back to Sanity who was then faced with the struggle to get it to the car. Again, it was walk about 15 to 20 steps, stop to put chew down, lick lips, take a bite, pick chew back up and start walking again. By the time we finally got home the chew was long gone and I had a pup who was too tired to do anything other than go to bed for the rest of the afternoon.