School's Out

Well, we wound down our last two Puppy II classes and now are on Spring Break, or Summer Vacation.  The next class offered in our series is called Real World and at this point, I don’t think Ray is really ready for that and our instructor agreed.  We’ve learned a lot in the past couple of months and honestly have not practiced all of it and much of that which we did practice needs more work.  We’ve had some great outings lately but have also had some “blips” which I want to work on.  Being that Ray is celebrating 21 weeks of life this week, he is young enough that we would benefit from more at home and at-large practice before enrolling in the next level class.

In Puppy II, there were only Ray and Caymus in two of the classes and actually last week Ray was the sole attendee.  Since we knew it would be a Ray-focused class, Asia came with me and we learned and worked on some great training tips for her to use in her interactions with Ray.  I think it was exactly what the two of them needed as he gets to be too much “puppy” for her sometimes and then her frustration mounts.  With Asia expecting, we want to make sure she is comfortable being with Ray and handling him even when he gets rowdy and giving her the tools for success.

Happy to greet you from right here.

Now go away so I can catch a cat...I mean cat nap.

We will definitely miss seeing everyone from the teachers to the other student(s) to the folks who were in Puppy I with us and we occasionally got to see after class.  Last week after his great solo class, Ray was about to settle into the back seat when we saw Juno’s moms.  It turned out that they stopped by to say Juno (who Ray adores) wouldn’t be in class that evening, so we were bummed that we didn’t get to see her.  They hadn’t seen Ray for several weeks either and M always swears that he is on steroids because one week he looked like a puppy and the next he was ripped.  Ray was happy to see them both as well, but the little prince preferred to greet his subjects friends from the comfort and dare I write, relative safety of his back seat. 

I think the self imposed assignment going forward will be to select specific things to work on each week and continue to incorporate them into our every day lives as well as more frequent and varied walks.  We also have the safety net of knowing Marjorie or Jodi could come do individual sessions if needed so we feel pretty confident going forward with the continued support.