Keeper

(This post is part of the April A to Z blogging challenge.)

Keeper's my first Bernese Mountain Dog. She's very different than my boys. She's not dumb, she's just not driven to the same level. While she very much likes cheese, she's very laid back. I like dogs who want to do more, and she's content to chill. In many ways, that's really good for me right now, because if I need to sleep, she's content to snooze. In other ways, I feel like I push her too hard because she isn't in my face asking to do more.

She's picking up more ideas and training is coming faster as we work together more. I think she's to the point where I can add some pressure and demand more and better from her. But I wanted a deep bond before I started asking precision of her, because it takes a mental focus and a trust to drill on things to get them consistently right.

She's a big puppy. Like, I have trouble thinking about her and remembering that she's not mentally mature. She's 105+ pounds (the vet's scale isn't that accurate over 100 pounds). She's still got filling out to do. She's a teenager, basically. Most her height, but not full grown. She'll be bigger. Finding collars for her that don't get lost in the fluff ar cost $40+ is difficult.

She's sweet, and a little shy, but she's willing to jump up on retaining walls and put her front paws up on many things. I think her confidence is growing- in herself, in her body in space, and I think in me. She's learned what a clicker is, she's gotten past her fear of being left in a room or in a crate, she's stopped balking when I push on her rump. There's so much that we have done, and sometimes I have to remind myself of that, instead of looking forward to where we aren't. We've covered a lot of ground. That there's more yet to go does not diminish what we've done.

Her heeling and her retrieves are coming along well, her alerts are advancing, but I need to work on her persistence if I want to see her develop intelligent disobedience. Mostly, I need to swing the focus of our training from house rules and manners to skills and tasks. It's not that she isn't learning.

I really do like her. She makes me laugh. She's silly and expressive and wants to do right. She's got a lot yet to learn, and I need to get her out more, but those are mostly my shortcomings, not hers.

One thing I do need to correct is the "sit on the human" behavior. She's found that hopping up in bed and sitting on my legs is a surefire way to wake me up and get me to let her out. Wouldn't be so bad if she weren't so big. Time to reward more nose bumps and having her chest bump the bed. She's more than big enough for the chest bump to shake me awake. And I'd much prefer the bed rattling or a cold nose poke to being squished.