Kane chronicles – 31 weeks

Kane is continuing to grow although it’s not as noticeable week to week now. He is also getting more confident, but how he shows that isn’t the best, he barks at people and dogs that he wants attention from. Which isn’t going to get him many friends. So now we have to work on correcting that without causing him to become fearful. Might be a little bit tricky.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts Rosco isn’t great on leash, he thinks pulling is the only answer. Because he is 10 I’ve kinda conceded defeat with winning the battle of leash walking with him. That being said Kane was starting to be a bit of a pain when walking on leash. He wants to be close to his brother, which meant I was correcting and redirecting more than I wanted to, and it was making walking them on leash together less enjoyable. In comes the head halter (we use the gentle leader ones because they were what we used on Kira, Gunner and Sloan). I figured if I tried it early enough with Kane it may be the answer. We did a few days of training in the house and then 1 day in the backyard. I would put it on click and treat, then take it off and repeat. Then we moved up to putting it on and leaving it alone for a few seconds, then minutes, and then finally moved to walking with it on with a leash attached in the backyard. We have since taken it out on our walks, and he walks like a saint with it. Doesn’t even seem to notice it is there. Just walks with a loose leash and doesn’t worry about keeping up with Rosco.

Kane isn’t a fan of the cold water at the lake, but he absolutely loves playing in it. We haven’t gotten him to swim in it yet, partly because he can still “bounce” when Rosco is swimming and partly because I’m not going in to encourage him to try swimming. He is fearless though, puts his head under water to grab things and runs after Rosco without any hesitation. He also continues to love his pool. I’m sure that will only get more use as we start getting warmer weather.

Fetch still isn’t his favorite thing to do, but he does do it now…cause it’s Rosco’s favorite, and he does like to do things his older brother does.

Our trick training is going fairly well, although I have to admit I haven’t been working on that as much as I should be in the last couple of weeks.