What a Week

Does it make me a bad dog mom if I laughed when I read that note? Admittedly, I am glad I heard about this after the fact. We have had quite the time the past couple of weeks. Iris' misadventures include jumping the fence, busting open the front door to harass the mailman, fighting with Zeus (and she's got the puncture wounds to show for it), and just generally tearing at the windows and everything around the windows in her quest to bark at cars.There's a tear in the screen door, and I'm afraid she'll go through that door next. So in short, Iris will be staying in the basement while I'm at work (she has 2 x-pens worth of space). She's got a nice bed, a bowl of water, and a kong. She gets walked before I leave. It's not really the ideal situation, but it is better than her getting hit by a car. Plus, I really don't want her spending all day barking and lunging at cars through the windows. My biggest issue with that is that every time she barks and lunges at a car diving past, she learns that barking and lunging is effective at making things she doesn't like go away.

In more fun news, agility class a week ago went well. We worked on different entrances and exits for weave poles. I'm starting to get the hang of front crosses. Iris still needs cages to do weaves. I think my next big purchase will be a set of weave poles. We need more practice! At the end of class, the barn's owner came in to check the lights (we had some weird buzzing sounds going on during class). Iris was up in arms as soon as she heard the tractor. She's been really good lately about not barking at the other dogs in class, but a strange man entering the barn pushed her over the edge. At least we were done for the night and I brought Iris out to relax in the car. Last night agility was also lots of fun, but more on that in a separate post.

Lately, Iris has been really good about not "checking out" or getting really flighty during class. I've been trying to build up some toy drive at home partly just to convince her that playing with me can be just as much fun as playing with Henry. She's not quite convinced... I have figured out that she likes stuffed animal squeaky toys the best. The problem is that they only hold up for a couple of minutes. Iris thinks tearing them up is pretty cool. I can't afford to to replace a toy after every 2 min of play. If anyone knows of any stuffed animal toys that are also durable, Iris will thank you!

Last Thurs we started a Reactive Dogs class at Masterpeace. The first class was no dogs and really basic. We just went over teaching eye contact and sit with a clicker. So maybe a little too basic for Iris, but it's definitely something that every dog should start with. I think we're going to get a whole lot more out of it once we get into the "meat" of the class. Another interesting note, Emma is teaching a Control Unleashed class right now too, which I hope she runs again at some point.

It seems that my crazy red dog is keeping me too busy for blogging so sheep herding and this week's agility class (both complete with pictures) will follow later.