Just settling in...

We have not had much exciting news the past few days.  Daca is just spending some time settling in with the family. 

Today she discovered just how fun that baby pool in the yard can be.  To this point she thought it was just a big water bowl.  Today she decided she would test the waters by slowly climbing in.  She could not stay out of it from that point on.  She would wade thru it, attacking the leaves under water then get out to roll all over the ground.  She looked rather silly with a mud mustache.  Needless to say it needed a good cleaning by the time Daca was finished.  

We love to work our trick training.  She is so fun to work with.  I can just see that little brain of hers clicking as we work.   When she arrived she knew all the basic commands.  She also knew spin but we have officially added "other way" to that so now she knows both directions.  We are working hard on "sit pretty" but it is oh so tempting at times to lift that butt off the floor when the front paws come up.  My bet is next session she will have it down.  

We have been working on our fetching skills.  I could not ask for more.  She has a super strong game of tug which we use to get the full retrieve.   She got so into the game we accidentally ripped her squirrel a little.  Guess it is time to head to the plastic soon.  She has the game of soccer down except when she decides she needs to kill the ball.  She is coming along way better in this area than I had anticipated!


We have started taking her for walks thru our neighborhood.  Our neighborhood is quiet but we usually run up on a low key stimulation to work on some focus and redirection (people mowing lawns, weeding their flower beds, dogs laying in their yard, etc.).  She has done very well with this.  It is hard for her still but she knows what I expect and has been very good to this point at obeying.  We have only had one incident but it was a super over drive stimulation but 10 feet past and we were able to focus again.  On her defense it was a puppy running toward us and a large woman running behind with her hands out to the side.   I think I would have taken defense too had I not known better.  We moved on about 10' on past to work on focus to me.  She immediately calmed again even with the people still in site and we were on our way to finish our walk.  I would say that being our only incident on all of our daily walks we are off to a great start.  My husband and I laughed about the lady/puppy incident when I got home (long story why but it was comical to us).  


While on our walk today my 9 year old son says..."This is the best dog we have ever owned."  I will leave it at that :-)