10 Weeks Old

So Oscar turned 10 weeks old last Friday - he's approaching 11 weeks, and boy, is he getting big quick! His face is still cute and soft, but you can see that it's starting to mature a bit.

From Diary of Oscar

Taken this morning, he got up just as I was snapping a pic of him.

From Diary of Oscar

Now he's being good, but now he watches us like this because he thinks we'll drop treats in his mouth.

From Diary of Oscar

He looks like the perfect puppy here!

From Diary of Oscar

Coming closer with his sleepy eyes.

From Diary of Oscar

Stretching his neck to touch me...

He's cute. His morning, he was calmer than usual. I was able to start some of the training that we learned at Puppy Kindergarten last night.

It was our first class with Ruth. There were other owners there - owners of a mastiff, bichon, golden retriever, and pug. I like that there are two other big dogs, especially the mastiff. It sounded like the mastiff has similar training issues like Oscar does, such as eating twigs and rocks and trying to hide them in his jowls.

Ruth introduced us to the gentle leader head collar which is supposed to help us control Oscar on walks - to prevent him from sniff every goshdarn thing on the floor. I swear, one day, he will hit his head on something since he's always looking at the ground!

This morning, I started the following trainings:

1) Clicker reinforcement

2) Treated directly after every pee and poop

3) Tried the chase me game (tough one)

4) Intro to the nose loop of the gentle leader (getting there).

He only tried to grab my pant legs twice. And once he did, I ended play time and walked inside and watched him from the screen door. When I came back, he seemed good. Then later, he bit my arm and I said, "Ow!" and walked to the garage door and turned my back to him. About a minute later, he came right up to me and sat down quietly. I waited a few seconds, and then got him excited to play again.

We're getting there. I hope the gentle leader helps. Ruth likes to teach them slowly how wonderful it is, so hopefully by Sunday, she'll be able to come by and fit the collar on him, and maybe by the next class, he'll be very good and ready to use it.

Keeping our fingers crossed!