Rohan V's the Lake

Well at least we now know he can swim.

We took Ro on a forest walk on Wednesday night and he normally skirts around the lake . Not this time, he threw himself in at the deep end. Prompting me to shriek at Rob to go in and get him! After a couple of cries of 'Swim Rohan Swim' , the cutest doggy paddle emerged and he made it back. I did think he would be a little shaken up but he wanted to get straight back in again.

He wasn't quite so thrilled by the bath he was subjected to on his return!

At puppy class on Monday night he was an absolute debacle. He is normally top of the class as the youngest there but I could hardly get him to stand up let alone do any of his usual tasks.

He definitely has a mind of his own, but it did make me realise that you can't take it for granted that he knows something, we have to keep re training every day until it becomes second nature,
at the moment he is solely performing for treats!

We really need to work on his ignoring other dogs. At the moment he wants to make friends with everyone but as all dog owners know not everyone likes someone else's dog charging at theirs friendly or not.

Rob is going to bring him on a couple of my shorter dog walks this weekend and we'll see if we can get him to walk quietly.

It is really apparent that Rohan is getting more and more aware and starting to use all of his senses, I thought by never giving him treats/leftovers from human plates he would never learn to beg. He has turned into the 'Bisto kid' this week, whenever we have tea his nose goes ninety to the dozen and he stares balefully at us. The good news is it is still a half hearted effort and he will go and lie down after a minute but we need to work on it.

The biting is still there, albeit in much smaller occurrences, as I think he is now in teething. We are taking the approach of saying no once and if he doesn't stop taking him out of the room on his own for 10 seconds. It sometimes takes a couple of goes but he does get it.

He has also started jumping up at people so that is a major working point for next week, Hopefully it will kick in alongside the leaving other dogs. I do feel like I spend an awful lot of time saying no and its really important to remember to heap the praise on when something goes well.

We're going to take him to the beach this weekend, definitely going to use a training line though, not feeling a rescue from the North Sea in Autumn!