Moving Success

In the interest of full disclosure, other than his momentary lapse in judgment Monte behaved exceptionally well on his birthday weekend.

We spent the weekend preparing to move Lisa's mother from an apartment to assisted living. Monte spent the majority of the first day in a DOWN STAY while people were in motion around and over him. The doors were opening and closing as empty boxes were continuously being exchanged for full ones. When offered the chance to greet some of the younger movers, he was calm and gentle, only taking a few liberties to determine what they had for lunch and clean their faces.

Saturday night we took a break to drive from Cuba City to Madison for the Badger hockey game. Always an exciting time for Monte, we tried to slow down in order to reduce his level of excitement. With limited success from our planned slow routine, the event that worked the best was meeting our teammate Apple at the game - her first.

It's always nice to see other puppy raisers and it provides a unique challenge of another canine where there usually aren't any. This seemed to have a calming effect. Monte performed his DOWN STAY while Apple looked cute and sat patiently working the crowd. She was kind enough to share some overflow attention with her over the hill teammate.

Sunday found us back in Cuba City with Monte monitoring our progress. He faced a few new challenges as there were more visitors. We practiced STAYing when the doorbell rang and visitors entered. With less movers he was "free" more often which allowed us to practice WAITing at the top/bottom of stairs as I transported my cargo.

Not a physically demanding weekend for our puppy, however, he has been resting at my feet for the last three hours. He received many compliments on his behavior. There may still be hope.