More Brewster Rockit

Pretty much all we can remember about this week is getting used to having a dog. He really is an amazingly good dog. He loves his kids and is very well-behaved in general. Alison has also started on obedience training and he is good at it; he learns fast.

Timmy is the most responsible for him, so Timmy and Alison take him out morning and night to walk around the block or run around the dog run. Brewster Rockit absolutely loves playing "Tag;" he play-bows, and the humans crouch down and then jump or lunge. Then Brewster dashes around at top speed before play bowing again to start over. Sometimes he goes around trees and waits behind them to see which way you're coming before running out the other way. It's a lot of fun, although Timmy is getting less enamored of the process as it gets colder. Alison will have to help him get properly dressed for the temperature before going out, even if it's annoying to spend as much time dressing and undressing as actually being outside.

Sara is still nervous around the dog. About halfway through the week, as Alison started doing obedience training, she suggested half-sarcastically that maybe she should give Sara tidbits whenever Sara did something brave. Sara actually really liked the idea and promised to work for mini peppermint patties. So Alison bought a bunch of bags from the Dollar Tree and gave her one bag a day. Sara really pushes herself and stretches her limits for the first part of the day, until the bag is empty. Then she goes back to being terrified until the next morning, when she gets more candy to motivate herself again. Alison is debating whether letting her have unlimited candy would encourage her to push through the fear and do more, or if it would just let her eat a ridiculous amount of sugar. The jury's still out on that one.

Mike and the kids have been taking the dog with them during Outside Time every afternoon. He has trouble staying close when walking on the leash with a group, so we've ordered a head halter off Etsy and we'll see if that helps. When Alison walks him alone, he has decent leash manners, but it's impossible to practice those manners AND deal with the children, so we hope the head halter will take care of that for us. We also get the impression that he must have some herding dog ancestry, because he tries to herd Gideon and Boo and keep them close to the group.

He's learned to sit and lay down for hand gestures and is getting good at laying down during dinner. He will steal things off the table if we're not in the kitchen, so we need to work on that. It is teaching us to be more careful about leaving food around. He does drop and leave things when told to do so, so as long as we're watching, it's OK. We are still trying to figure out toys that he likes. He doesn't like his Kong, or rope toys, or stuffed toys. He will sometimes chew on rawhides, but not always. 

We hope to figure out what motivates him. When there's no distractions, he will work for kibble, but if there are distractions, we haven't found a food that motivates him to pay attention. Or a toy. Or petting. There must be something! But the more he gets used to our routine, the less distracted he is, so the kibble works. And he learns really fast if he's focused. He's jumped through ten steps of Sit and eight of Down in less than a week. And he's learned to come up to Alison and sit when he wants attention. We're hoping to extend that to the rest of the family. The trick is convincing the kids not to pet him until he sits. They're struggling with that.

It snowed heavily Tuesday night; we got around a foot of gorgeous powder. We found out that Brewster Rockit  loves the snow; he jumped through it and invited us to do the same with play bows. He spent hours doing that. We ended up letting him off the leash in the yard while we shoveled, and he just plowed through all the new snow and had a blast. It was really fun to watch him being so happy. He didn't have nearly as much fun when the snow was packed down, though he still liked it. But the new, deep powder was his favorite thing ever.

We went to Grandma Sheila and Papa Mike's house all day on Sunday. Sheila, Olivia, and Petra are here for the week from Colorado, and Dan from Arkansas, so the Plastows came too and we had a great time. The kids enjoyed hanging out with their cousins (and Papa Mike), and the adults enjoyed sitting and talking. We brought Brewster Rockit, and he was pretty good at staying near Alison on a leash, since a few kids weren't comfortable with him being loose. Papa Mike and Dan both took him out for a while and had fun with him. It was great to talk to Amy and Sheila and Dan and Dave. Mike got to play Sushi Go, so that was awesome too. We'll get together with them every day this week, and we're so excited. It's going to be a great week.