Oh, the riddle

This weekend at the agility trial, Zane did fine around all the dogs. They barked, they ran, they walked by. . . no issues. Yesterday at 4-H, he had issues with one (stress signs, lip curl). This morning we went to the park to walk. There is a dog park on the edge of this park. We walked by it, but didn't go into it. A dog was in there and ran along the fenceline barking at us. Zane went on alert, barked and growled. Why did that dog bother him, but all the dogs at the agility trial didn't? Was this little dog yelling, "Hey, your mother's a cat! Your dad came from the pound!"

Zane also found the jogging man very scary. Even when we later went past each other with him walking, Zane did not like him.

This afternoon we got out the Happy Legs. We haven't done them in awhile. After that we worked on hand-stacking, then on free-stacking. Along with "step" to get him to step with his front feet, I'm trying to teach him "toe" to get him to move his back foot back if needed. I do find it hard to be motivated about working on conformation stuff since it will be awhile before he goes into the ring, and then it will be the altered ring. Being a cryptorchid, he'll never go into the regular conformation ring, and I really don't want to neuter him until he's around 18 months old. We have a long wait to see how he'll do in that ring. I have to admit I'm finding myself a bit depressed about that whole issue. Bella turned out not being quite up to conformation standards (coat color issues, front is off, front movement is paddling). I thought Zane was my chance. . . and it's not happening there either. Maybe this is my sign that I'm supposed to stick with performance events only.

Zane has started eating some of his dinners out of Nina Ottoson puzzle toys. I love making the dogs work for their food - it fulfills a need that eating out of a bowl doesn't. They were designed to hunt and work to eat - not having it handed to them in a silver dish. The first time he gave up after figuring out about half of it. Tonight he worked to the very end.