Hahaha, that was kind of funny. I took him out front today to brush him (you know, so the fur doesn’t end up all over the HOUSE). He started getting hyper, so finally I decided he’d been combed enough and said okay, let’s go. Well he was SO happy about that he yanked the leash right out of my hand and took off around the yard! Man, he had a blast… crazy-dog tuck-butt, having a BALL. He didn’t come when I called him, BUT he stayed in the yard - having been out there a lot on the long lead, he knows he has to stay on the grass, and he did! He actually went and pounced on his ball, then came RUNNING towards me, veered off… RUNNING towards me, veered off. I’m pretty sure he would have come to me (and stayed instead of running off) once he lost a bit of that energy, but I didn’t want to wait that long. So when he dropped to the ground (we don’t have a solid enough down for me to tell him to, yet), I said STAY, and walked up and grabbed the leash. Then he got a BIG belly rub for being such a good boy.

So obviously we can’t trust him off-leash yet, but he’s doing so SO much better!! Stayed in the yard and stayed put so I could go get him - now that’s a good puppy.

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.

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!!

Well in administering that IQ test I moved some furniture around. And underneath one I found a nylabone I had bought for him a month or two ago that he totally ignored. Well NOW he thinks he just found the jackpot and has been very aggressively chewing on it for 15 minutes now. o.O A GOOD sign, because I need to find things he likes chewing on - besides hands and furniture!

Superdogs Canine IQ Test

Zeeke so far has done 8 of the 12 tests and scored a 5 on all but one of them. I always knew he was too damn smart.

I wish I could test Oreo.

Today I brought along the long lead to our trip to the air base for our daily walk. I learned that he really does need to be strapped in in the car, as I fought with him the whole way up there (it’s a tossup between fighting with him and suffering another bitten-through seatbelt). But that’s not why I’m posting here, lol.

No, see, we got there and once we got out into the field, we changed the 6′ leash for the long lead. He was a DOLL. He trotted ahead back and forth, checking out all the scents. We didn’t even have to tug at the leash at ALL, he only hit the end once at the very beginning when he got a bit too excited. After that it was slack for the whole hour. When he stopped to investigate a particularily interesting smell, we’d call “This way!” and he’d come galloping up to us. Sure, he bit at the leash a few times in excitement (sometimes he thinks it’s a new toy), but he showed absolutely NO inclination to run anywhere. I’m sure he would love to run, but man, if he can stick with us like that maybe there is hope for off-leash walks in the near future!

I’m very proud of the boy.

Last night Den and I went to bed as usual, letting Zeeke come up to cuddle for a while. Unfortunately Zeeke took the bf’s spot and had to be shoved over into the middle, which ended up with Zeeke stuck squished between us, legs sticking up in the air. He didn’t thrash around, which surprized us, just kind of wiggled, then stilled and gave little sigh-whimpers. We finally let him up.

What happened next is just… odd and extremely funny. I see the lamp at the end of the bed swaying, so I look down to see why Zeeke’s anywhere near it, only to see a tail waving around as Zeeke disappears under the bed.

Here’s the setup: my side of the bed is against the wall, the bed’s only a little over a foot off the ground, and the floor is hardwood. So Zeeke crawls under there against the wall, on his SIDE, feet against the wall.

Den and I are laying there staring at each other in surpize, cause we can clearly hear the snuffles and grunts coming from directly underneath me. We start giggling. I look down the 2″ gap between the bed and wall and see paws and a nose. By this time his head is right under my shoulders, he’d pushed himself all the way under the bed almost to the other wall.

Then, he pushes off the wall and angles out toward the other side of the bed. He’s grunting and groaning and his feet are scrabbling against the hardwood like mad. He’s directly under the center of the bed, his nose just sticking out from under the bed in the clear, when apparently his back feet lost contact with the back wall he’d been using as a springboard. And he got stuck. Not stuck as in wedged, but stuck as in he couldn’t MOVE. He’s absolutely stuck on his side, and his feet are nowhere near a wall, and he’s not getting any traction on the hardwood. His feet are windmilling, he’s grunting, we’re wondering if we should pull him out between fits of laughter. But he’s making progress, an inch at a time. Finally his head emerges, then his shoulders, then he puuulllssss himself out and shakes it off.

And what does he do? Goes right back to the foot of the bed and sticks his head under. LOL

Zeeke comes with for a daily car ride with me every lunch to visit daddy at work. Bf works for the air national guard, and surprizingly no one seems to care that we bring the dog into the buildings. In fact, most people say “OH, what a beautiful dog, what’s his name??” hehehe. By now Zeeke knows exactly where daddy’s office is and will pretty much drag me down the hall and into the room. We close the door and let him run around bf’s office room while we eat - but we cover the garbage can and put down a bowl of water for him.

First funny thing - today Zeeke runs into the office and, after greeting daddy, stands in the attached lab room and starts barking. I say “I think he wants some water.” Den walks into that room and hunts for the plastic bowl we use as a water dish. Zeeke staring intently at every sound, wagging his tail. When the tap turned on, Zeeke sat politely and licked his lips. He knew exactly what he wanted, where that water came from, and who needed to go get it, lol!!

So anyway, we took off the leash and let him loose in that room. I had to sneak out to get a drink from the fountain for myself, Zeeke sat as I opened the door, I was just getting myself through the door when Zeeke got up and bolted through the door and down the hall.

Now, see the thing is, it was a monday when no one was in except the bf - he went in to get some extra work done. The building was completely empty, except for us, so there’s no one for Zeeke to bother and no way for him to get out. So both bf and I just rolled our eyes and waited for Zeeke to come back.

First thing Zeeke does is make a beeline down the linolium-floored hallway to the end, then attempt to take a sharp right, slide and skid almost into the wall, and then take off down the hallway out of sight. I waited, then called, “Oh Zeekie! Zeekie, where aareee yoouuu?” A blurred shepherd body goes shooting across the hall halfway down the corridor and down another side hallway. You know those movies where there’s a long hall and people are running back and forth from room to room? That’s exactly what it looked like. I cracked up so bad. Then I finally grabbed a piece of donut and called “Zeeke, COME!” A head appeared around the corner. He looked at me, then looked down the hall to where the door is as if to say “Come ON mom!!” But I called again and he did a scooby-doo going from 0 to 60 in .2 seconds, except on linolium he just runs in place for a few seconds, before shooting down the hall towards me and crashing into my legs (he also can’t stop on linolium).

I just have to say… what a FREAK!! But it was so freaking funny to see him sliding back and forth, zooming down the halls practically yelling “I’m FREEEEE!” I almost let him back out just to run around again - but I didn’t know if I’d get lucky a second time to have him actually come when I called.