Waffles had another great week of learning and consolidating things he knows. He got to work out and about in public and really start focussing on his people-neutral and dog-neutral skills. He’s a fast learner with an intense desire to please, which makes things a lot easier. I’m quite impressed by his ability to focus despite his age. Right now, his “Puppy Timer” runs about 10-12 minutes, which again is pretty impressive for a 3.5 month old puppy. One of his outings this week was at the local feed store, where he got to meet a bunch of humans and show off his politeness skills — and his tummy for belly rubs. He was happily dog-neutral when other (very large!) doggos walked into the store doing their own things.

He’s doing great in Kindergarten and gets a chance to, again, try out his focus skills while surrounded by people and other pups. It’s great to be in a class with others, and to brush up on things. This age and stage is tricky for trainers — even really seasoned ones: it’s easy to get lulled into feeling like “this’ll be easy, he/she’s SO GOOD!” especially with a puppy who is really eager to please. Puppies really want to hang out with their humans and do fun things! They’re chompy, sure, but they’re sponges who learn really fast. It all goes great until the hormones kick in and the Adolescent Fairy descends upon you and your awesome puppy. Or maybe the Adolescent Fairy gets summoned up from the hellish depths of despair? Just like with human children, the best you can do is hope you’ve put down great foundations and that those will help see you through the turbulence of adolescence. When raising working dogs in particular, I find the best thing to focus on is working on my relationship with my dog, making them seek me for fun and fulfillment, and maintaining the basics like routines and structure in everything you do. In my experience, if your foundations are strong driving into Hormonesville (population you and your puppy) you’ll come out the other end with a pretty awesome doggo.

Waffles has a lovely steady temperament and we’re working hard to cultivate an on/off switch. So far, so good! He’s quite good at entertaining himself, settling on his own, and doesn’t have any separation issues. He still absolutely LOVES puzzles, a good game of “Get It!” fetch, and chase-and-stalk-and-hide games with his stuffed otter and stuffed dragon.

We spend quite a bit of time playing with empty boxes and empty plastic bottles and exploring things that move, make noise, and sometimes collapse or move a little under us. It’s fun! (These fun and funny little activities turn out to be really helpful later when service dogs are asked to walk on weird surfaces, or to pick up strange things like a dropped credit card off the floor.) This week, we’ve added some hand signals to some of our commands, mostly because he’s doing quite well without lures. We’ve also started using toys and fetch as a reward and he’s enjoying that quite a bit! He has also accidentally caught on to “No Thank You!” as a stop that behavior command. I’ll take it! His recall is improving every week. I expect it to become rock solid soon and then completely disappear when he hits adolescence (at least for a little bit!)

Our greatest challenge at the moment is being mouthy and working on bite inhibition. Given the work he is going to do when he grows up, he can’t be taught NOT to put things in his mouth, but he CAN be taught only to do so when asked AND how to apply the appropriate amount of bite pressure to fit the task presented. This takes time. And young retrievers can be a little mouthy! The teething fairy is upon us, which means he has turned into a total champion-level piranha. We keep him entertained with chews and things that are legal to destroy and shred, and do all we can not to reinforce puppy-chomps when they happen. It’ll improve over time. His bite pressure is already way softer than it used to be. This will continue improving and then the frequency of these chompy episodes will decrease.

On the housebreaking front, he is now reliably asking to go out even when we’re in the middle of playing hard. Hooray! There’s nothing new to report on the kennel training, pen training, or tether training front — he’s becoming savvy across the board. He’s started learning the concept of “Place” (I use “Chill” as my cue word for this) and it turned out to be way easier than expected — for weeks, he has chosen to go chew his chews and play with his toys on mats and blankets. So introducing it as a training thing was essentially paying him for something he already does naturally. Got to love it when a behavior comes pre-shaped and the dog is just super happy to “get paid” for something he already does! Everybody wins!

It’s amazing how fast little puppies grow up. Given the speed at which he’s growing, I think he’ll end up being the same size as his dad — he just went up a collar size and is now in his adult size kennel. He’s about to cross the twenty pound mark, so I estimate he’ll max out somewhere between 44 and 48 pounds as an adult, just like Archer and like his dad Rocket.

Have a great week, Breakfast Food followers! Our training plans (more consolidation!) will go up tomorrow. Phew!

(Nota Bene: It was an eventful week in our household — not so much on the learning front as it was on the “old dog breaks himself again” one. Archer has injured one of his knees and finds himself once again confined to crate rest for a few weeks. He sees his surgeon (Dr. Murphy knows him well and has fixed him up more than once) in early December to assess whether or not this will need a surgical fix. Because of course it probably will. Archer was named after Sterling Archer (IYKYK) and proves once again that nominative determinism is absolutely a thing when it comes to dogs.)