This is the post for 8/25/10. Due to our adventures and my homework, it was close to 1:00 am before I was able to put this up. Pippy had several new adventures and did a remarkable job today. We were able to sleep for seven hours straight through last night and went for our morning walk around the hotel. The now normal bug hunting ensued. 

Once at Peaceable Paws, Pippy spent the morning in the back of the classroom on a long line again. She entertained herself by chasing a fly and playing with her toys! She seemed content and happy all morning and allowed me to focus on education. This was the best she had ever behaved in the classroom environment.

We went on a hike and went further out into the “wilds” than I had taken her before. What this really means is that we went down through a rocky area between pastures behind the barn. She had a blast chasing bugs and exploring new smells. We then got ourselves into a place where she started barking at a horse in the distance. In an effort to keep her under threshold, I tried various paths back. By the time I noticed what we were actually doing, I realized we were smack dab in the middle of a huge area of poison ivy. I am very allergic to the stuff and definitely should have been paying more attention.  Now the leash, long-line, Pippy, and her toys had poison ivy on them. Yikes!

I was trying to locate a place for Pippy to stay when she could not be the center of my attention. It was going to be awfully difficult for me to manage and handle her all day now that she was a walking ball of poison ivy and it was too hot and sunny to crate her in the car - even with it opened up all the way. Pat asked what I thought about seeing how she would do with the other dogs out in the kennels, which are located just outside the classroom. These are individual kennels with one dog per kennel. Since there were only three dogs and six kennels, this seemed like a wonderful time to try it. Pat’s unbelievably helpful assistant Shirley set up some screens in the outdoor kennels just for Pippy. She did very well. I could easily hear her if she barked and she settled in and remained quiet as long as I was out of sight. I also think it gave her a chance to get used to being near one of the larger dogs that barks at her. When I took her out of her kennel and walked her past that dog, she did not return any of the barking.

Our training sessions went well today and we kept her fairly happy while decreasing the distance between the two dogs yet again. We had some distractions in the morning that caused her some concerns, but she bounced right back in the afternoon. The distractions included Sturgis the pig “talking” to us, some twigs and such falling onto the tin roof of the arena, and two other dogs barking and whining outside. In the afternoon session, she completely ignored most of those same sounds and rarely blinked at them! Of course we had a big, happy Pippy party at the end of our session.

She did well the rest of the afternoon. Then it was time for a whole new adventure – Pippy’s bath.

She was not at all happy with me when we arrived back at the hotel. I carried her, crate and all, into the hotel room and straight to the bathroom. I really couldn’t afford a major case of poison ivy and she hangs out on the bed! I joined her in the shower as I had obviously just handled her again. All of the contaminated items also went into the tub. What a good girl she was. I washed her, harness and all and actually she remained fairly calm and under control the entire time. I dried her off a bit and let her go while I cleaned myself up and then washed some towels, pants, leash, socks, toys, and the long-line. We could have picked a better day for our poison ivy escapade. I had a lot of writing to do last night, which included a take home quiz (I wrote ~four typed pages of narrative for this), a management write-up, and the writing for our daily journal. We went to bed at 1:00 am this morning. We are back up and at ‘em and have already been out for our morning walk. 

I am very much looking forward to another good day with Pippy! Sorry, no new pictures as we have to get our act in gear to get out to Peacable Paws in time to start class. I will try to get some of her out on the campus today instead of just in the hotel room, but no promises.