I’m getting more and more impressed with this dog. I know he’s crazy and drives me freaking NUTS with his attitude, BUT he is so so so intelligent it stuns me. And when he wants to be good, it’s good!!

Today the boyfriend didn’t have time to take Zeeke for a walk at the base, so after I brought the bf lunch, I picked Zeeke up in the car and took him to a local park. It’s a big park, and this time I went to the far side that I haven’t visited before.

Almost immediately I snapped the long lead on him, once we were off the parking lot. I found a trail leading into the woods, so off we went. He, again, really impressed me with his manners.

Shortly after we started along, a lady on a bike with an off-leash lab went by. I made Zeeke sit on the side of the trail and held the leash tight. The lady asked if he was friendly, I said yes, so we let the dogs mingle. Zeeke had his head up high, his chest puffed out, but as usual the meeting was flawless. Compared to my Oreo, Zeeke is a SAINT with other dogs. (Oreo used to be quite dog-aggressive). This boy just loves to say hi, then they sniffed each other and around. Very politely. Then we went on our way.

After a while I realized we were on a bike trail, not a hiking trail, which wasn’t a huge problem because we saw a total of 4 bikes (in two parties, including the lady with the dog), but that meant the loop(s??) were HUGE. I pretty much got lost. Good thing I have a really good sense of direction, so when we finally found a branch that headed back where I wanted to go, we took it and found our way back without problem.

Here’s where Zeeke’s intelligence came into play: there were a lot of trees. He pretty much stayed on the path, tracking from side to side, and stayed on my side of the trees (first way he impressed me). But a few times he didn’t, and got wrapped around a tree. Now this has happened with Oreo before, and she pulls trying to get to me, barks, whines, and I have to go unwrap her. Zeeke, on the other hand… He looked at me. I gave a light tug on the leash. And he walked back around the tree to come to me. !!! Do your dogs do that?? I think that takes an incredibly amount of intelligence, I was just hugely impressed.

I also discovered that we are going to have no problems with Zeeke and water. Almost the entire trail was right beside a creek, and where it wasn’t muddy I let him get a drink. The second time the bank was really steep, with big boulders making very steep steps down to the water. Zeeke was overbalanced and wobbly, but he finally made it down to the one that was only 1-2″ off the water surface. Instead of leaning out for a drink like I thought he would, he… jumped in. It came up to his tummy, so he happily stood there and drank, then waded out further. He probably would have swam had I thrown something, but I didn’t and he hopped out towards me - and shook. LOL His daddy’s going to kill me for letting a slightly-wet dog in his car - even though I covered the back seat with the sheet and he had dried off quite a bit before getting in the car.

We practiced comes, I had treats with me. Apparently he didn’t find the treats all that tasty, although he came running towards me most of the time. Sometimes whatever he was sniffing was just too much for him, though, and I had to reel him in. (He’s already better than Oreo, haha!)

But still, he was GREAT!! If you had seen him, you would have thought we’d owned him since a puppy and he was very well trained. I’m so proud of my baby!!