The Countertop Chronicles

Spent the weekend hanging with the dog. Yesterday, we went to Roosevelt Island for a nature walk. Saw a baby turtle, a bunch of ducks in the marsh, and two different snakes sunning themselves. That got the oldest pretty excited.

Oh, and we also went to the beach opposite the Georgetown waterfront and played fetch with Rex. He’s a little leary of going too far into the water - wont easily go up past his tummy but after sploshing around has no problem getting fully immersed, as long as he can still stand. Its not really a problem, yet, as he is still a puppy so I want to ease him into this.

I’m training him according to Dick Wolter’s Gun Dog book - which co0incides with the instructions he has received and will receive from Jack Jagoda (his breeder and trainer) later this summer (who, incidentally, is mentioned a number of times in the book).

The one thing Wolters recommends is playing it slow and letting the dog have fun in the water and get used to it at his own pace. We did that, and I further walked out with him into the river (the air was 80 degrees, but the river was fricken cold) and held him as he got a hang for paddling. It seemed to work for a second, but then he splashed around hitting the bottom again.

We did that for some time, and then some other dogs showed up which made it difficult to train, but made it very exciting for him to play. And, he is a playful puppy after all, so play they did. Of course, in playing with others (even dogs that aren’t nearly as trained as he is, he is still learning - and from these he learned a bit about swimming).

Incidentally, some bitch came walking up to the beach - and was just standing there amidst all the dogs, when she suddenly started yelling at them all to behave as they started coming up to snff her (as dogs do). She was clearly not a dog person, which begs the question, why would she put herself amidst 3 playing dogs????

The rest of the walk went well. Rex is really progressing, and I showed off some of the skills I was working on that morning to the wife - much to the amazement of others who saw him. For instance, he will know (largely) sit on (whistle) command from a distance and then stay till I release him. I was able to walk 150 yards away from him whistle him to come, and then stop him on a dime half way to me, to sit, until I released him again. Its a pretty basic skill, but still something to see in a little puppy.

Today, I took him over to the Izaak Walton league to introduce him to gun fire. Went first to the skeet range, backed my Cherokee up to the field I was on and opened the back with him in the crate. We shot 3 rounds of skeet (I sucked hard), with him there and then I went to the rifle range and played with the WASR (more on that later), in a similar setup (though he was a bit further away). Afterward, we jumped into the pond and splashed around. Without a beach, he was a lot more hesitant to jump, or even, crawl in so I laid off the training and just let him chill and play and splash.

Tonight, though, things got interesting. We had some chocolate cake for dinner, and my son got up without finishing his. It took only a second for the dog to jump up and grab it (a bad bad habit that seems terrible difficult to break - especially with my wife unwilling to properly discipline a puppy) so I ended up spending the night at the emergency vet clinic. They induced vomiting and gave him some medication, and kept us there for 4 hours. Oh, and it cost $389, which is a lot but not as bad as I thought it would be.