Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Gozer update

It's been a while again, hasn't it? Pretty much all of my time and energy has gone towards Gozer and her training. She was having a much easier time at night once we stopped making her sleep in her crate. She's been sleeping on a comforter on the floor that used to be on our bed so it smells like us (even to the untrained human nose).

I forgot to give her the Clomicalm late last week and we've had some problems with her being restless and demanding to sleep on the bed beside me since then. We've also set up an exercise pen (xpen) in the bedroom so that she can become desensitized to it. We're both going to be traveling in a few weeks and Gozer can't just sleep any old place on the floor while we're away, so we're hoping she'll sleep in the xpen. Before we can get her to sleep in there, she needs to see it as just another piece of furniture.

We've also been working on training Gozer and getting her used to me moving away from her while she's in an xpen in the great room. Training is a lot of a work! Fortunately, Gozer's doing well. One game she really loves is Find It, where we put kibbles under a 500mL yoghurt or cottage cheese container (or two) and she has to sniff them out and get to them. She is very good at turning these containers over. Of course this means that these containers aren't safe on the floor because she'll try and find kibble under them.

I hope that Gozer continues to improve. At least we have an awesome (and very patient) trainer helping us with Gozer. She's made this training easier than I thought it would be and she's got good tips and ideas.