Bailey's Progress Report

I've decided that I'll do a progress report for Bailey each week. It will be a great way for us to look back and see her progress. Hopefully I can help other dog owners too. I'll cover how her training is going, her favorite toys, product reviews, any special activities we've done and anything else I think is relevant. I'll plan on doing this on Fridays...just like in elementary school. Our next month is going to be extremely busy, so it may be posted on Sundays some weekends.

Training

We've been clicker training since Bailey came home. She seems to be doing very well with it. We're working on the basics. Name recognition, sit, stay & come. She's doing pretty well with her name now. She does well with sit, stay & come in the apartment. She does pretty well with sit outside, but we're working on distractions...especially people. She thinks everyone should stop what they're doing to pet her. She LOVES people. She pulls, jumps, you name it, just to get to people. I'm glad she likes people, but we definitely have to work on that.

She isn't as good with other dogs. She's interested, but when they come to sniff her she gets scared. We definitely have to work on socializing her in that area. Just a little bit of a back story here. There is another stray female dog near my dad's house who isn't so nice. She beats up on Bailey's mom. (My dad thinks there's a possibility that she may have attacked some of Bailey's brothers & sisters...I'm SO glad we saved her!) Anyway, I'm hoping she didn't do something to or around Bailey to cause her to be scared of other dogs. It took her some time to get used to the other dogs at my dad's house. We want to put her in puppy kindergarten primarily for this reason. We're comfortable with the progress we're making at home with the training but we don't have any control over if or when she'll see other dogs & people.

Last night I had a girl's night at a friend's house. Josh came over to pick me up and he came in with Bailey for a little while. My friend has a lab. It took Bailey a little bit to warm up to her but she played with her just fine once she did. She's a very vocal little puppy when she's playing. She barks a lot when she's playing with other dogs or even if she's just meeting them. She met another puppy in PetSmart today. She was a 10 week old lab named Kaya. They were adorable once Bailey decided to stop barking at her. They gave each other puppy kisses. Too cute!

Potty Training

She's doing ok during the day while we're at work. We have been leaving her in the bedroom with her crate open. Her time at home alone during the day is around 10 hours 4 days a week. We're not comfortable leaving her in her crate that long. She has had a few potty accidents this week, only one of them was on the potty pad we put down for her. She likes to chew up the potty pads but that's really the only thing she chews. I have sprayed all the furniture with the bitter spray. Either it's working really well or she has no interest in chewing on it. I'm going to assume the spray is working :-) We're using Purina Chew Deterrent. I picked it up from Wal-Mart. You can take my word for it. It's super bitter. She hasn't (knock on wood) had any poop accidents since she's been here. For her potty accidents, we're using Nature's Miracle. It does well with stain removal and odor removal as far as I can tell. Bailey doesn't seem to be able to smell where she has gone before when we use this. It has a nice clean scent. We got ours from PetSmart but I think they have it at Wal-Mart too.

We've been monitoring when she has accidents & what happens before. She hasn't figured out how to tell us she needs to go out. I know she knows she's supposed to go out though. Sometimes she sniffs around first and we can usually catch her then. Sometimes she will be in the middle of running around in circles then just squat. That's obviously a little tougher to catch. She will sometimes go withing 20 or 30 minutes of coming in from a walk. We have noticed that she's had accidents when she gets excited that one of us comes home from work or when one of us wakes up in the morning (after she has already been with the other of us). 

Walking

She's doing pretty well on the leash. She typically only pulls when we're on the way home and she's improving. It can be challenging to get her to walk with us if she's interested in something else. She loves grass. Clumps of grass and tall grass are her favorite. She likes to pick up clumps after the grass has been cut and try to throw it around. She doesn't seem to pay much attention to birds but we still haven't seen any squirrels or anything like that yet. As I mentioned before, she gets crazy when she sees people. That's our biggest obstacle with walking right now. 

Playing/Toys

 Bailey usually gets really hyper after coming in from a potty break. She loves to run around the apartment when we leave the patio door open for her. She will go outside and bark at her reflection in the door. She jumped at it the other day and ran into the door. It was hilarious. I wish I would have been recording, but I'm usually not when she does something really funny. She loves her Kong but she will only play with it for a few minutes if it's empty.

 This is her toy box. She used to try to chew on it when she got her toys out. She's a lot better now. She'll just go poke around in the box, pick a toy and take it out. It's so cute. Eventually I plan to teach her how to put them back up. It doesn't take her long after her naps to drag all of the toys out.