Terra's World: Day 2 (09/12/17): agility class, Welshie, vet, training, crate

Terra slept through most of the night. She woke up once early on and howled briefly. She was probably confused about where she was. She settled back down and was fine until morning.

Chimera has agility class on Tuesday mornings. Terra has been so mellow that I took her along and let her stay in the car during his turns. I can't fit a crate large enough for her in my Prius, so I just have to hope that she doesn't go through a bored adolescent phase and destroy my car one day. This time she shuffled around, got herself stuck underneath the back seat hammock, and then went to sleep.

I walked her around a bit and was happy to see that she wanted to wander and explore. She didn't notice the agility dogs running because I stayed far enough away that we wouldn't distract them.

Two clients came to drop off their adolescent Welsh Springer Spaniel for boarding. Terra was in the kitchen but when she saw them in the doorway, she trotted to the bedroom and lay down in the farthest corner, under my desk. I was upset that she was so upset. However it was a lot of triggers at once (sudden appearance, two new people, new dog). I will have to tease out what bothered her most, and do my best to desensitize her to all those triggers separately. I kept her separated via baby gate from the Welshie for most of the day.

Shortly after we had our first trip to my vet. She was nervous when walking in and clung to me when she heard dogs barking. No hesitation about getting on the scale when it was quiet - 42 lbs even. The vet was behind schedule and she fell asleep in the lobby. When we moved into the exam room she laid down at my feet and slept though most of the exam. She was still exhausted from since Sunday. Her heart and lungs sound fine. The tech cleaned some persistent dirt out of her ears.

She went into the crate for a couple of hours while I worked with the Welshie pup. After a quality nap, she was more energetic in the evening (though still overall very calm/subdued for a puppy). She played with toys here and there, and tried to chew on the cabinets (which in this case I considered a good thing).

Chimera gave her one single play invitation during the dogs' active evening time. She then barked and pawed at the floor and laid down while staring at him - all lovely play invitations, which Cai ignored. I let her briefly mingle with the Welshie, whom she mostly ignored. She gave some stress signals when the Welshie went up to sniff her, but she has good recall and would come back to me.

The mark of Zorro?!

I'm transitioning her to a raw diet (prey model) and gave her her first chicken wing. At first she licked at it over and over. I ended up cutting it into smaller pieces and then she chomped them down. No upset stomach later. For dinner she got her kibble with added kelp and fish/vitamin E oil, and she chowed down.

We did a few mini training sessions (5-10 treats each time). I'm capturing/shaping eye contact (mostly clicking for moving her head upwards and not staring at my hands) and shaping a nose to target stick (figured out the basic premise quickly but sometimes noses or mouths the stick instead of the ball at the end).

She had a little trouble settling in her crate for the night. She would whine, lay down, get up and bark a few times, lie down, nibble on a chew, etc. But within 10 minutes she was chewing consistently, and shortly after that she was asleep.