Learning

June 13, 2008

We’re still at the cabin and Kruiser keeps learning more about the world. Earlier in the week it was currents and cold water. Now he’s learning about fire. At first he was totally oblivious to the heat and burning danger around our outdoor fire. He still doesn’t completely understand it (we’ve had 3 outside fires in the firepit so far) but at least he doesn’t blithely walk downwind of the high flames any longer. And he’s still learning not to eat animal scat—it seems it has to be a species by species lesson, and even then with several repeats. He and Pat even go so far as to rummage around for very old horse manure that we worked into the dirt before planting grass and flower seeds last fall. We definitely need to be on top of checking for any parasites from his culinary experiments. He’s also finding out about flies and butterflies. And on Wednesday when I had him in town he got to see operating heavy construction equipment up close—a dump truck beeping it’s reverse signal, a rotating backhoe bumping buckets of dirt, a grader, etc. He was curious but not scared.

Today we took both dogs on a hike up along the creek and then up to the upper logging road. It was probably 4 or 5 miles total. Kruiser did fine until the last mile or so. We stopped for a snack and gave him some kibble and he took a cat nap, but afterwards on the way down the trail to the cabin he stopped and sat in shady spots several times, just like on the Chimney Gulch hike a couple of weeks ago.

He’s been at about 95% on his recall. Last night he took a while when he was scrounging for droppings (on leash after that), and then today he tried to follow Pat at first when we called once, but then came--not quite enough of an infringement for leashing. Overall he’s still really good at coming right away. I’ve even gotten to see how the “heel” exercise evolves into a regular heel. When I was walking with him along the path between Fraser and Winter Park, he thought I had a treat in my closed hand and immediately started heeling and sniffing at it. So we did some practice with treats and me weaving and slowing and starting along the path, and he was perfect. We still need to get it down without a treat and under more distracting situations, but he was able to make the jump from walking around cones (or empty flower pots or unsplit wood sections) to just following me wherever I walked.

He’s fine overnight now outside his crate and can go through the night without needing to go out.