Sunday, November 14, 2010

A Weekend in the Poconos

Dave's family has a house in the Poconos and this weekend we took Jonah for his first trip there.  The drive is about 5 hours--the longest we've taken with Jonah.  He was a little fidgety, but overall very good.  Once we got to the house, he was quite brave going in the house and exploring around.  There was cat smell and cat toys and all sorts of other interesting things.  He even went down into the basement when we were turning on the breakers.

Yesterday we went to the Promised Land State Park and had a lovely walk.  There was a stream across the path that we humans had to build a stepping stone path across.  Jonah didn't understand at all why we didn't want to wade through the 3-6 inch stream and decided to jump and splash on me while I was moving the rocks.  My feet stayed dry, but thanks to his playing the rest of me got pretty wet :).

We hiked out to a pretty bridge between two lakes and took a little break there.  We played with some tricks and Jonah was doing great with long-distance down commands and stays while I ran away from him.  He also explored on top of a beaver dam, but didn't get to meet any critters.

Later that afternoon we went for a run and Jonah was great.  It's so much fun to run with him.  We never have to worry about him getting too tired--he's really in his element when running along.  He just looks so happy!

All weekend Jonah had been a little concerned with going on the dock.  There was a wooden dock that he went out on by himself, but he didn't want to go down the steep stairs onto the metal dock.  We carried him down and he'd walk around cautiously on the dock.  It was funny how I'd almost forgotten how nervous he used to be when we first got him.  We hardly ever see that from him anymore, but it reared its head with the docks.  It was neat to watch him as he was clearly so nervous but he also wanted to be with us, so he'd slowly make his way to us and conquer his fear.  Good boy.  It makes me realize that, just because he's been so good with all his agility lately, he could very well be nervous again when we take him to a new place or to a competition.  We'll have to see!

Today we had a real adventure.  Jonah went kayaking.  He (understandably) didn't want to jump off the dock into the boat, so I picked him up and handed him to Dave in the boat.  Then I got in front (2 person kayak).  Once he was in, though, he was great!  He thought it was awesome.  When we'd stop, he would lean over and take a little drink.  Sometimes he would decide we weren't paying enough attention to him and he would lick us when we were defenselessly paddling along.  We had a great time.

Now we're safely home and ready to start a new week.  I heard back from the closest potential new agility place and their intermediate class conflicts with one of my classes.  I only have 3 more weeks of class, so I could do that in a few weeks, but I went ahead and emailed one of the other potential places, too, just to see what our options are.  Wish us luck!

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