Mark and his mam who was visiting took
Murphy to his first puppy pre-school. He loved it. He was by far the biggest in
the class but absolutely loved meeting other dogs. The training for the first
week was to teach Murphy to sit. This is something we have been working on
already so Murphy got to demo it for everyone and he was very good. He even did
it on a hand command and no voice command, top of the class for that one.
Everyone was then shown how to do a simple vet check that we must do regularly
at home so he gets used to being handled which will make visits to the vets a
lot less stressful. We were given a good few handouts and helpful tips for over
the next week.
The following week Mark was away in
Melbourne with his mam so I took a friend along with me to puppy-preschool.
This week we had to take someone else’s dog and get them to sit. I got one of
the small fluff balls and he did it really well. Everyone passed…eventually.
The lessons for today were about nail clipping and what your dog shouldn’t eat.
It was all very informative and helpful. The training for the week is to get
your dog to sit, stay and you take 3 steps back, wait for 10 seconds then have
him come to you. This is a lot easier at home in a quiet space but add in crazy
puppies running about everywhere and it is really hard. As we have two weeks to
master this. We also have to master walking on the lead. We want him to walk
beside us and not pull at all. Generally again out on the walk he is very good
but if another dog/small child/jogger/bird comes near us he pulls in that
direction. He will get there eventually but I am not sure how long this one
will take. He loved catching up with his little buddies. It was very cute to
see.
Murphy is discovering that since he is
bigger now he can reach more things if he jumps up onto something. Particularly
leaning on tables and the outside BBQ area. It’s something we have to keep an
eye on and tell him he is not allowed to do because if he eventually tries to
jump up he might hurt himself when we are not around or he might get out of the
garden, which would be worse. It is mad to see how tall he is when he does
stand up. With the increased height he has become a little boisterous as well
and started to jump up on me when I was bringing out his food so I have made
him wait calmly for his food or else he doesn’t get it. He has learnt this
pretty quickly and it makes feeding times a lot more pleasant.
He has continued to dig in the garden in
some areas. I am trying to look for some doggy day care places that Murphy
could go to so he is not so destructive at home and for him to make more dog
friends. Hopefully my next post will be more successful with that.
Some more Murphy points:
- Murphy didn't like this plant or he likes it alot:
- His bed was getting wet so we bought him a new tarp to sort him out and it seems to have done the trick
- He still prefers squeaky fluffy toys to rubber rings
- He loves tearing ropes apart
- He is still trying to fit into his bed even
though he is just a bit to big for it now.
