Day Two

Caspian is a beautiful brindle Pit Bull waiting for his forever home. He is eager to learn, has a cheerful and optimistic outlook on life, enjoys the company of dogs and people. Below journals his adventures at Great Dog.

Day Two 5/29/08 by Judi Anderson-Wright , MA, CPDT

Today was his first experience welcoming the daycare dogs into the play space as they all start arriving at 7am. He was curious about the gang as they came streaming in, but welcomed them happily. I arrived and watched him play for 10 min. before he saw me and greeted me with a wide grin and a wildly wagging tail.

He has a rowdy play style that could be misinterpreted, because he likes to make growly noise and uses his paws to box, but it is all friendly, exuberant ruff and tumble big boy play. Anyone interested in adopting him should be educated that he is really high energy, uses his voice and boxes a bit.

He is feeling good and is showing no signs of anxiety or stress. He did get a bit too exuberant and just could not keep from humping a dog, but he was called off and realized it was rude or that the very least too much!

He is very interested in a puppy (already 80+ lbs. Great Dane) He will continue to grow in his confidence so we are making sure that he doesn’t get too rowdy too soon and over step his bounds with the long time senior dogs. I am sure that he will learn quickly and be respectful of his new found friends.

Just finished a training walk on his wonder walker harness, and he was perfect on lead. He learned to sit upon request at each street corner prior to crossing. Returned for inside training to work on general obedience skills. First I assessed him for food aggression, possessiveness, etc. no problems so far.

Next he met my own Jack Russel Terrier, who had to give his “paws up or paws down” impression of Caspian. The meet and greet was doggie text book perfect, and they quickly began a round of chase me-chase you. Both accepted treats in the presence of each other and both waited patiently while the other received verbal attention and a treat. All very good news for Caspian.

He is quickly exceeding my expectations, which were pretty high already having observed him in our class at SAS over the past few weeks.

I introduced him to the clicker today, which he found to be really motivating. He will be trained in both clicker mode and traditional positive lure-reward techniques to maximize learning and adoptability.

Caspian has a rock solid “watch me” and “sit” as of today’s session. He is also showing a very strong recall, but can be distracted away from the recall by noise, movement, etc. He has an emerging down, gets it all down BUT the bottom-very cute, but not a down yet. We will work on that more. Introduced “wait at the door” and he picked up on that very fast.

He is now out with a dog walker working on leash skills and burning off some steam. Final words on Caspian-He is a fabulous dog!

Please visit his Petfinder page to find out how to meet Caspian. http://www.petfinder.com/petnote/displaypet.cgi?petid=10857696