I’m so impressed with Zeeke, again. I took him to the park today instead of the base, I like the nature walks with him. Hour-long walks, who woulda thunk it of me?? Well he’s just an angel. He walks along beside/ahead/behind me, never gets too far away… some times a scent is just too interesting to catch up too quickly, but he heeds my calls. He unwraps himself from trees, he’s absolutely polite to other walkers and dogs, he listens to me, and he’s just so darn happy. I have a bunch of pictures - I need to get a photo album up here to show everyone. He was having a blast, especially when he got to play in the creek, heheh!

I also wanted to mention that he now knows a new command - “Place”. He has a new dog bed in the office and I needed to use a different word than “Bed” (that’s his crate) so I used “Place”. Obviously he doesn’t care what word we use, long as he gets taught what it means. Well he has it down pat now, he’s so great - I grabbed his PB Planet ball and he gets all wound-up and I snap “Zeeke, Place!” and he went running down the hall into the office (not the bedroom!) and then ran to his bed and layed down. (He has to lay down on it.) Then he gets his goodie and he stays reasonably calm as he licks it clean for a while, haha.

The Seperation Anxiety is getting worse, though. He’s starting to refuse going in the crate, where we didn’t have a problem a few weeks ago. *sigh* Today we put him in it so we could sweep and vacuum the house, and he barked for about an hour. So I ordered some new toys/treats that are for crate-only, see if that makes it more fun for him.

Mouthing is getting better. He will hover over my hands, but is biting less and less. He wins the “prize” when he does, though - a timeout in the bathroom (bathroom because I feared the timeouts in the bedroom were making his crating anxiety worse). I’m proud of Den, too - when Zeeke mouths other people, they always say, “Oh, it’s okay, he’s just playing,” but Den responds with, “No, it’s not okay, we don’t like that and we’re teaching him not to,” and then corrects him and makes him approach the person nicely. I don’t think I’d be able to do that, I’m still kind of shy around people. -.-

Oh, and Zeeke’s letting me touch and hold his paws now. Yippee! Nail clipping still gets him a bit uneasy, but I can grab and hold his paw without him doing much more than blinking at me. Woot.