Fall

According to the calendar, it is fall. Since it has been over 90 degrees every day of fall until today, I'm having trouble believing it. Anyway, because fall has started, I figured I needed to start writing again about Ms. Morgan's training. WE have been very busy. Morgan has had two swimming lessons (one in a pool and one in a lake). She has had two obedience lessons with Suzanne. We have been diligently training albeit only a few minutes a day but we're getting better.

The biggest struggle I am having with Morgan is her screaming in her crate. On the first day of school, there was a major thunderstorm and Morgan completed destroying the door to the dog room. As a result, she was running around the house free as a bird when I got home from class. It was then, that she has been relegated to her crate because I just do not trust her to have run of the house. At first she screamed in her crate when I put her in there at night. She stopped doing that so much and now she is screaming at 5:00 in the morning. I don't know which is worse. They both disturb my sleep. Anyway, there were times when I literally wanted to kill her for all the noise she was making. My anger actually scared me if it didn't scare her. Sunday morning, I was so furious at her and nothing was working to shut her up that I rolled her and her crate out onto the porch and I went back to bed.

I always tell my students that if it doesn't work, do something else. So last night, I decided to put her crate in my room and start all over with crate training. She is quiet as a mouse in my room except that she did wake up and move around a lot at 5:00 but she did not whine. Yay! She will sleep in my room while we complete the crate games video. Once we are done with the crate games video and she is loving her crate, I will start to move her out of my room. I sure hope it works. I'm not supposed to have dogs in my room which means that I will probably have to bathe her every other week if she is sleeping in my room.

The other problem we are having is about toy motivation. However it is 11:30 and I'm pretty pooped so I will have to write about that tomorrow.