Hi Shari!

Link:

Luna’s Schedule

Here is your training page for sweet baby Luna!

Days 4 & 5 : 1/7/25-1/8/25

1/7 - She slept in until 8 AM! She always rises with sunset, so I think blackout curtains where she sleeps would be helpful, and she loves sleeping in the cold so I open the bathroom window for her and she presses herself into the tile and enjoys the breeze. I stopped giving her water about 20 minutes before her last pee of the night and limit it after dinner, which helps her sleep later! We did great with car training, I just put her in the backseat, randomly throw treats back there, crack the windows just a bit and she curls up and goes to sleep now! Major key! Now I can bring her on Petco runs and let her pick her own stuff out, and bring her to Home Depot/Lowes, which is also great for socialization. I do a lot of desensitization work at the home improvement stores lol.

She’s starting to understand that she gets rewarded for sitting quietly and doing nothing and she’s getting tons of enrichment drom digging in the yard, scavenging for treats, snuffle pads, and weird DIY enrichment games like stuffing a paper bag with more paper and tossing a bunch of treats in there and letting her dig for them! Stuff like this is great for the cold weather, which she loves but I…don’t. She did well meeting people, is still struggling to let people past without trying to interact, but that is normal at her age. We started training “place” with a hammock bed, which may serve in place of “crate” for when you have clients. As long as we can train in a solid “stay” which shouldn’t be a problem, she may not need to be crated while you’re in the home, a win for everyone.

1/8 Speaking of crates, guess who did 3 minutes of door shut chilling in her crate today?! When I opened it back up, she opted to stay in there and snack on her kong. Kong is going to be your crate secret weapon, and I know it isn’t ideal to feed her cheese whiz, but IT WORKS and she loves it. Today, to balance it out, I introduced apples, and she was obsessed. We worked more on “place” and “off” this morning. Her herding instinct has kicked in and she has been trying to nip my legs a bit. I am just ignoring it and redirecting her. The “touch” behavior was also introduced today, although I haven’t put the cue to it yet (we nail the behavior before we name it.) Touch will help with teaching recall, stopping her nipping, and teaching her to maneuver her body into the heel position amongst many other things. It’s the most versatile and important cue in my opinion, and shes picking it up quickly! Here are some videos of her today with her enrichment toy and her apple and of course, her crate success, which she tackled even as I added distractions such as walking past and letting Bunny retreive treats outside of the crate.

Today she got brushed to be pretty for her vets appointment, but went straight to digging in the dirt afterwards, hahaha. She’s so fun and good, I love her!

DAY 3: 1/6/25

Today has been a MUCH easier day after tiring her out so much yesterday. I made an IG post about all the things we did together, wobble, walks, kong, rope, fetch, digging, splashing in her water, pretty much anything but sleeping, and last night sleep she did. The key was to just not let her sleep after 3 pm and keep her engaged before that. She is allowed to take naps in the morning/when I need to get something done, but otherwise I wake her. Lots of play in the afternoon helps-she was only up twice last night (which you’ll see reflected in her potty and training chart which is moving to this link. Last night I had to wake her up to go potty instead of the other way around the first couple of times, but at 3:40 am she woke me up to bring her out, and then slept again until 6:35, progress! I left the window open for her so she heard the rain outside and she really appreciated that!

As for potty, she’s had a couple accidents in the house, no big deal and to be expected. I figured she’d pee every 1-2 hours and she’s hovering at around 90 minutes, which makes it easy to plan for. Her schedule is at the end, will update daily. She is doing fine! I have noticed she likes to go for bottles of cleaning solution and has learned to open my bottom cabinets already, so will be taking necessary precautions for sure! She doesn’t really leave my sight, so it’s not a problem. She really wants to play with Bunny, who is not at all interested. I am going to put my feelers out for massive puppies for her to get play time in with. She needs to socialize with other dogs but it’s a struggle to find ones that are hearty enough to handle her but also as playful as her at her young age! Don’t worry about her, she’s doing wonderfully, but feel free to stop by if you’re missing her. Right now she’s sleeping peacefully under my chair on the balcony and she has a kong (stuffed with cheese flavored kong treat) and a wobble ball (full of frozen broth) freezing for later. I’ll let you know how they work out!