Day Five: Slow as You Go ...

It stormed all day so we spent most of it inside.

Ellie doesn't seem to mind the rain as much as Kane; if I can get him outside, she'll follow him without a problem. In fact, she liked to linger outside despite the bad weather, whereas Kane ran out, peed as quick as he could, and came running back. I was a little nervous about her reaction to the thunder, but she didn't mind that, either.

Clicker training is going ... okay. She's smart enough to understand it, I know that. When I look in her eyes there's a level of awareness in them that Kane didn't have until he was 7 months old, at least. She's watching and absorbing everything; I can see the gears turning in her head. But I think she needs to mature a tiny bit more and finish settling in before I can really work with her on it. I'm still doing multiple, short sessions every day, but right now she has the attention span of a gnat. :-) She's still good with the hand signal and will sit for it every time, but the verbal signal is at 50/50. Not really surprising when you think about it.

Kane and Ellie are doing great with each other. Kane has taken on the mantle of Older Brother and is giving Ellie corrections when she needs it. Earlier today, she was especially hyper (maybe because she actually almost slept all the way through the night!) and was ignoring my efforts to keep her butt on the ground and stop jumping against the expen. Kane quickly and efficiently took matters into his own hands (paws?) after one time too many of her making a racket next to where he was trying to sleep: he gave her a short, sharp corrective bark in her face. I'll tell you what, her butt hit the floor and she didn't try jumping again. He gave her warning signs before then, too; he turned his head to look at her, his ears went back, and he stiffened. As she gets older, she'll be better able to recognize those more subtle signals.

Tomorrow is her first vet appt with Dr. M. I'm expecting that to go smoothly; she'll be getting her second set of shots. Thank god, because parvo and canine flu is really bad in my area this year.