Marty kept me up until after 2am last night, so I was exhausted and was still asleep when the alarm went off at seven. Their sluggish ways may be contagious.
Lyle stayed home with me until almost ten, and then I had to take a nap in my box. Marty came home to have lunch with me about noon, and we worked on training. Did you know that humans cannot be trusted to stay with you unless you attach a string to them? Ridiculous! I put one on Marty for the first time today. Just to make sure she understood how it worked, I threw some of my best rodeo moves at her, but she managed to hold on. I think this is probably going to work out, but it sure is a lot of trouble right now.
I had to go back in my box after lunch, but then Joyce and Nita came over, so I hung out with them for a while. Marty came home to get me about 4:30. Now that I have the string on her, Marty doesn't make me just stay in the stupid rectangle anymore. That may have something to do with the fact that every time she dumps me in there, I bark at her. She really doesn't like my barking, so it's an excellent training tool. While we were walking around, a big truck that played funny music came and some of the human puppies went running to get frozen biscuits. Marty asked their mom if I could meet them and she said yes. I liked two of them okay, but one of them was dressed like a big red and blue spider and I DID NOT LIKE that. Human puppies are weird enough without adding spiders to the mix. Their mom asked Marty if she was a professional dog trainer. She should have asked me if I am a professional human trainer. Obviously, Marty is better trained than I am.
When Lyle got home we had to drive to school. It's a long drive, and I slept. My class has four puppies. Hudson - a ten week old lab puppy. Murphy - a five month old golden retriever. LittleFoot - a four month old terrier mix, I think. And me. There are also two big dogs. One is a cocker spaniel, and one is a pit bull/lab mix, but I can't remember their names. We each get our own little station with a mat and a water bowl and we work with our own people. I have trained Marty and Lyle to give me a treat every time I put my butt on the ground. I'm working on getting them to give me a treat for putting my elbows down, but they're having a little more trouble with that. We practiced those two things for a while, and then we practiced "polite greetings". This means Miss Jessica comes over and says hello and gives you a treat if you don't jump up. I am not training Miss Jessica, so I didn't bother getting up. She tried to give me treats, but I didn't want them. I mean, the goal of the exercise was not to jump up on her. I didn't jump up. I think she should have just moved along to Hudson, who plainly could have used the extra time, but she kept trying to get me to eat her treats. After that we practiced putting our elbows down some more. I put my elbows down and took a nap. School is really boring. After class there was time for me to play with the other puppies, but I stayed asleep. Eventually they will learn that Chessies are introverted dogs that just like to be close friends with their own humans. Labs and Goldens can do enough socializing for the whole class.
We're spending the night at the farm tonight, which is awesome. I'm making good progress towards teaching Lyle to pee outside, but I need to teach him to aim better. Tonight when we got here, he almost peed on me! He did NOT get any chicken for that!
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