New puppy book

Things got a whole lot better in the afternoon when David got home. We took Harley and went for a ride over to Garden of the Gods. We stopped at the parking lot of the visitors center so he could pee (he whined to let me know he had to go). Then we drove through the Garden. We saw a Blue Jay, a bunny and a dear while driving through. Harley did really well on the ride. We had him on the tie down and brought his duck for him to chew on. He enjoyed that. When we got home we closed the garage door and let Harley jump out of the car without being on leash. He followed me right into the house. He stayed in his kennel while we ate dinner. When I let him out of his kennel he was playful. We did click/treat training 3 or 4 times in the afternoon and evening. He is very good at doing the behaviors. I went to the bookstore and picked up two books. The first one is by Ian Dunbar and it is called "Before and After Getting Your Puppy". The second one was a kit that included a book and a i-Click by Karen Pryor. I've read the puppy book already (skipped a few pages here and there) and I've glimpsed at the clicker training book.

The puppy book has me feeling a little nervous. There are some critical deadlines that Harley is coming up on and I haven't done what was suggested for socialization purposes. They say he should meet 100 people before he's twelve weeks old (this Friday!). Puppy Pre-school helped with that but we're no where near 100 people. I'm going to have to get creative. I want him to be well socialized.

There was also information in the puppy book about feeding them their kibble using Kongs. That way they are exercising their minds and bodies and learning the correct things to chew on. I'll start that tomorrow. The other high priority issue is teaching bite inhibition which puppy school will help with. The other dogs will teach him to not bite so hard.

After reading the puppy book, overall I feel more hopeful that I can grow a good dog. I'm going to do my best to train Harley and allow him to become a well behaved dog. He's certainly worth all of the effort.