Endangering My Well Being

When training humans, it's important to move them out of their comfort zone in small steps.  Going too far all at once can cause problems.  I may have pushed Marty too hard today.  As you know, she insists on tying me to the seat when we drive places without Lyle.  This is horrible, abusive behavior, and I've made my feelings on it clear, but she doesn't seem to care.  So, while we were driving to work to pick up Lyle and go to wild dog school tonight, I barked RIGHT IN HER EAR!  She got really, really mad and had some kind of a meltdown.  

We stopped over at Marty's friends Hadley and Lisa's house for dinner before school and she told them my middle name is "Rotten".  They were really cool and I'm going to go back and visit them again soon.  (Did you know walking boots are not chew toys?  One more thing for the list I am making.  It gets bigger every day.)  I only barked during dinner when I got all the cheese out of my bone and needed Marty to put more in.  She told them that is exactly what she means by rotten.

Then we went to school.  I started in with the littles again, but they were boring this week so I got to go out and play with the bigger puppies.  I did run around a little, but I didn't actually play much.  Then during the lecture I was so noisy that I got my own special assistant to come over and feed me treats so I would be quiet.  See, I am such a good trainer I'm even training the staff at wild dog school!  Marty told the trainers that she is thinking about getting the spray bottle out to deal with the barking.  I'm not sure what that means, but it doesn't sound good and it got a lot of attention from the trainers.  They mostly said that this is normal for a puppy my age and Marty needs to be patient.  If they'd asked me, I could have told them that patience is not Marty's best thing.  They also said I need more exercise because "tired puppies are good puppies".  Marty said she is going to start taking me for big walks because the chances of me getting sick from germs are way smaller than the chances of her doing something I'd regret.  (That's actually what she said, that she'd do something *I'd* regret.  Rude.)  I am looking forward to big walks, because "tired humans are good humans".

After the lecture part (they talked about how I should get better things to chew on instead of Marty and Lyle), we played again.  This time I did try to play a little, but mostly I ran around under chairs.  Here is a picture of a typical example of me "playing" at school.  (That's me under the chair.)

We're probably going back to the farm tomorrow, thank goodness, but I think they're going to take me to the toy store and get me some pig ears or something first.  I'm pretty excited for that!