Ole day 18

Today was Ole's last puppy class in Del Mar. Once again , Abner had to take him as Donna and I have nosework class in Tustin with Elmo, Shelly and her dog Ginger on Wednesday evenings.
On our morning walk Ole was more reactive toward joggers, skate boarders, and bicyclists again. I need to take him out by himself and do some desensitization training around these things. If i have time tomorrow I'll take him over to the local skate board park and progressively train him to relax around them. If I don't have time it will have to wait until Monday as I will be out of town Friday through Sunday evening. I am going to a dog trainig seminar in Orlando, Fla.
Part of the reason Ole is more reactive I believe is that his optic nerve is becoming more developed. It will be fully formed at 16 weeks so he is seeing things more clearly as his body matures. My puppy is growing up!
At Nose work class , right before it was Shelly's turn to find the hidden odors, some one used a camera with a very bright flash. Shelly saw it and spooked. I asked to have someone go ahead and take our place and we would come back in when Shelly calmed down. I took her outside and let her go potty and we ran around and did some dog tricks to take her mind off the scarey flash. They called us back in and I ran Her straight in to the search area and told her to" find it". She had enough bounce back to carry through and find both odors and eat her reward treats. I was very relieved! Scared dogs won't eat, so it is a good way to measure stress . After her turn, I let her sit in the car instead of the crate in the training room so that she wouldn't be exposed to any more camera flashes. She was happy with that and very relaxed in the car.
On the way home , we stopped at Ole's class to watch him and Abner. It looked like they were doing well so we only stayed about 10 minutes and then headed home. Abner said that after their break Ole threw a puppy fit and wanted to play with all the puppies not sit and watch. Abner didn't know what to do so he took him outside as a time out where Ole pooped! Ole was much better behaved after that for the rest of the class. He is definately a work in progress.