Bailey's Progress Report

Sunday, we decided to take Bailey to the park again. We've been wanting to do this for a while now, but something always comes up. The last time we took her, she was still a little scared of other dogs. She's long past that stage now. She goes crazy and wants to play with every dog we see! We made the mistake of walking her with her regular collar Friday evening. We saw a beautiful Pit/Great Dane mix named Leo. He was such a calm boy and Bailey was just going crazy trying to play with him. She pulled SO bad! This is the main reason we wanted to take her to the park, so we could practice walking her around strange dogs. She did really well overall. We were able to get her to sit as dogs passed her (most of the time). Of course, she was very excited when we first got there, but it didn't take her too long to calm down. We let her get close to the water but she didn't have any interest in going in. I think this will take a little bit of time.

Potty Training

Just as I said last week that she was doing so well in this are, Bailey made me eat my words. I was so excited she had gone well over a week without an accident (almost 2 weeks)! Then...she peed on the kitchen floor. She has her own, very discreet way of telling us she needs to go out. Now, she sits at the top of the stairs, and just looks at us until we look back and realize she needs to go. I really think when she goes in the house now, she does it because she's mad about something or she just doesn't want to stop playing to go out? We walked her (twice) before we went into puppy class this week and she peed on her blanket when we had her sit. Josh took her outside and she didn't finish. I have no idea what that was all about. This means she went outside 3 times within an hour and didn't use the bathroom outside...but she peed inside! It's so frustrating, especially when she was doing SO well. 

Training

This week in puppy class, we did a practice graduation. For graduation, the dogs have to come (off leash and with distractions), heel, sit and stay for a minute and lay down and stay for 3 minutes. For the stay exercises, they're allowed to break 2 times and still graduate. A break is doing anything other than what they're supposed to be doing (including sitting when they're supposed to lay down or laying down when they're supposed to be sitting). If they go through all of this without any breaks or corrections, they get an "excellent". If they break once, they get a "good", if they break twice, they pass, if they break more than that or don't fulfill all the other requirements, they fail. Bailey got an excellent on everything except her down/stay. About halfway through her stay, I decided I wanted to sit on the floor. When she heard me sit down, she decided she wanted to sit too. She still would have passed....but I'll have to remember not to do that at graduation. Her real graduation would be this coming Monday. Since that is July 4th, it has been pushed back to the Thursday class. This is good and bad. It's good because we get a few extra days to practice. It's bad because there will be dogs she's never met in the Thursday class and I'm worried she'll be too excited. I think she'll do fine, but I'm still paranoid. We'll just keep practicing :-)

Bailey's Victims

This has not been a great week in this area...but it's mostly our fault. Bailey's gate has been installed for a few weeks now. We haven't put the locks on it yet. We've just been putting something against the other side of it to keep her from pushing on it. Well...she's getting stronger and she got into the State Room Monday. This room currently has a TON of boxes with all sorts of things in it, bags of shoes, furniture and random things we just haven't unpacked yet. I was scared to look once I noticed she had found a way in. There were at least 5 pair of shoes she had access to, but I didn't find a single tooth mark in any of them. She did tear up warranty information for Josh's drill and she messed up a pair of my fuzzy socks. The loose strings she tore out can just be cut off and I can wear them again.

I thought it would be cute to take a picture of her with these socks on...she thought we were playing. It was cute but they were big and they fell off when she walked.

She also decided to chew on our rug Sunday. The rug was already messed up. When we first moved in the house, I decided I would throw it in the washer before I put it on our new floors. This was a horrible idea...the washer ate a chunk out of one of the corners. Bailey decided she would give it a try too. she didn't cause any real damage...all that was previously done. She just pulled a string I was able to cut off. She still got in trouble though. Here's the evidence. 

I'm going to blame this on her teething, because she's done so well in the past.

Random
Bailey has always enjoyed drinking water from random places. We have to watch her because she'll drink out of random puddles and thing. When she was shorter, I caught her trying to get to the toilet water, but she was way too small. Now she's getting big enough to get to it. I keep the bathroom doors shut to make sure :-) Any time we go to water the garden, she gets SO excited about the water hose. Earlier this week we let her play in the water a little bit. She was so excited. She'll stick her whole head in the water with no problem. I don't get it because she still doesn't care for baths. I have a hand shower so it's pretty much the same thing, except it's warm water so it has to feel better (she drinks that too...haha). She doesn't even like to go in the master bathroom. That's where I wash her, cut her nails and brush her teeth, so I guess she associates it with grooming. This morning, I was getting ready and she ran up the stairs, super excited and ran in the bathroom. She stayed in there for a few minutes and I played with her a little. All of the sudden, she started to back out slowly. It was like she had just realized where she was. It was hilarious. She just sat outside the bathroom door, wagging her tail, waiting for me to come out. She's so darn cute!