More Olive News
Posted by Donald Merand
They say that a tired dog is a good dog, and an exhausted dog is a great dog. We have determined that they are correct in their estimations. Olive when tired sleeps on the floor, and wants only to be petted. Olive when energetic runs laps around the house, and jumps around like a fish on a hook when we take her for walks. Of all the copious advice that Sara and I have read/heard/seen, this is the most key. It’s much like I surmise it must be to have a child – sometimes (at least once a day) we’re frustrated beyond our capability to cope properly with it, and we still have to act like good parents because she’s constantly learning based on what WE do. But at the end of every day, we still end up liking her. It must be because she’s so good-looking.
Right now, she’s sleeping in her new favorite spot – under the daybed. She found out about it last night when we were watching a movie. We’re training her that furniture isn’t okay to be on, with the eventual goal that it is okay, but only if we invite her up. She gets it, so when it came time to watch Billy Elliot (our first movie in a while), she nestled in under our feet and found her new favorite spot. We think she likes it because it’s warm and the subwoofer is under there and it feels funny.
From the moment that we got home, she claimed the living room as her own, probably because it’s the only room with the carpet (aside from Fuji’s room, which is off-limits for now). All of her toys are neatly placed in a 6-foot area in the living room floor. Occasionally, she decides that my sandal needs to be there too. Just one sandal, and not the other, and she never chews on it or anything. She just neatly places it among her toys.
We had our first weekly training class at MPSCA Angell in JP. It looks like it’s going to be useful – we’ve learned many tricks about what to do to reinforce good behaviors in a dog. This is exceptionally important to us right now, because an unruly 60lb puppy is bad enough, but an unruly 120lb grown-up Mastador is not something that almost anybody can handle. We’re working on socialization right now – she’s pretty good around humans, but other dogs make her flip out entirely.
Also, the house is nice and we’re doing fine. That’s yer damned update.