New Day for Doggy

Going into Day 6 of Operation Dog Spy, I made some changes to Rockets environment. I removed his beloved ottoman, covered the futon with chairs and moved the crate from one side of the room to directly under the window.

So instead of spending his day like this

He spent his day like this

He also had quite a few spells where he found himself inside the crate but didn't seem to understand why he was there.

He spent much more of the day in motion, I ended up with many, many more shots on Monday than I had the previous days. He didn't sleep as much and seemed to spend much of his day trying to figure out ways of getting a better view out the window. Challenge is good, keeping moving is good but I am a little afraid he was pacing, which is not good.

For Tuesday, I am taking some pity on the poor guy and I moved the crate back to its original location so that he can access the window easier. He really, really seems to need to get to it easily  for his doggy happiness and I do not want to take that away from him. I am already keeping him off his futon and the couch (only with permission and a 10 count wait) and the my chair (without me)  so he is feeling the pinch of  New Rules as it is. I don't want to overwhelm him.

Monday evening I took some of the behaviorists advice and started to teach him the names of his toys. I am sure he all ready has named these toys but I am teaching him the English names of them as well so he can be multilingual and get into a really good doggy secondary school. Today we started with Squeaky Toy

Squeaky is  sturdy rubber and shaped like a football and so far has held off being destroyed .We like Squeaky. Today I named it officially and showed it to Rocket. Then we played "Hide and Squeaky" and I tasked the dog to find the named toy. Every time he found or at the very least looked for it, he got a treat. I tried for "Bring me Squeaky", but this was a little outside what he was ready for so soon. I settled on him looking for and finding it with as little help as possible.Another task was having him Sit and Stay in the kitchen while I hid the toy, we were only some what successful with this but he showed improvement by the end of the game.

We spend the next week naming and playing with Squeaky until really recognizes that toy as Squeaky. Next week we name another toy and spend a week with it. Eventually we will name all the toys and he will have developed a little vocabulary.

Today he peed the floor twice.