Ole feels his oats

Ole went to day care this morning and as usual, Shelly and Elmo got to go to Fiesta Island for an off leash walk and sniff trip. From there we went to Target to look for boxes that we could use to practice for the Odor retrieval Test (ORT) that Shelly and Elmo are entered in next week Wednesday. I was out of luck there but called Donna and she found perfect boxes at Staples so she bought 12 of them. I went home and then gathered up my scent bottles and containers and the 3 of us went over to Donna's house. We set up one box as the odor box and laid all the boxes out in a rectangle shape , 48" apart and put a scent container in the odor box. These were blind hides , which means I put the odor box in the rectangle and Donna would not know which box was the odor box. She had to read her dog and figure out from Ginger's behavior when Ginger had found the odor box. Ginger's signal when she found the correct box is to paw at it. She never missed a find. Elmo also was very clear about his finds, he put two paws on the odor box when he found it and or would stand next to the box and look at me and wag his tail. Shelly had problems today and seemed distracted and was not clearly signaling. She was very difficult to read. I took her off leash for the find it and when she did get it right massively rewarded her. Hopefully she will be better tomorrow when we practice.
From Donna's we zipped over to day care and picked up Ole who as Hiromi said , had a wonderful time at school today. He made a new friend today named Buddy, a little chocolate labradoodle that is 6 months old. He was however ready to go home for some lunch and a nap.
After spending a couple of hours at home, we all headed over to Noah's for an appointment for all 3 to get their nails filed. Ole just had his done 2 weeks ago but he wasn't very cooperative so I take him in every two weeks so that he will get use to it before he weighs a hundred lbs. Shelly and Elmo went back with Tess to the space where she does the nails while I spent some time in the shop teaching Ole to get in and out of the big raised bath tubs. At first i treated him for walking up each step and then for getting into the tub and then for hanging out in the tub and then for climbing out of the tub and going back down the stairs. He did that 3 times and got really comfortable being in the tub so I turned on the faucet hose and sprayed a little water in the tub but away from him and tossed him small treats for remaining calm with that. He seemed okay with it and even wanted to play with the water a bit so I knew he was on his way for a good bath experience in a few days. He got out of the tub and Tess brought Shelly and Elmo back with shiny pretty nails, so I sent Ole off with her for his turn. i was talking to everyone and I could hear Ole caterwalling in the back ground. He was protesting the dremeling of his nails. He settled down in a couple of minutes ( after Tess gave him some bacon and came out a couple of minutes later with nice short burnished nails. He'll be back to see Tess in two weeks. Tess showed me an accupressure point on his front legs that if you press calms him down. I'll be using it! I gave Tess a painting i had done of her little long haired chihuahua as a thank you for helping with Ole and also because she does so many good things for dogs in need. She is a really great person. I think she liked the painting a lot.
After we got home I made everyone dinner ,groomed them and fed them and put all 3 dogs back in the car as I had a class to teach in Del Mar. Abner left this morning to go camping and dirt bike riding in Big Bear with Donna's husband Phil so he wasn't available to help with the dogs. I decided that I would bring all 3 dogs to class. We stopped on the way to pick up Donna. Her Ginger was not feeling real good so she left her home. The class went really well. Elmo was the main Demo dog and Shelly and Ole came out and mingled with some of the students after class was over. They were very good. After that , it was back home. We dropped off Donna and that was it for the day.