Learning to love the vet's office

Enjoyed the sunshine that finally
peeked out this afternoon.

No video today, but we made some real progress anyway.

All my dogs actively enjoy trips to the vet's office. Of course they don't love every minute of it, but they are happy to go and visit the staff, get treats, and have a change of scenery. I've worked hard at that. And I have been determined that Alfie will love it there, too.

Alfie has also had a hard time with riding in the car. He initially refused to take treats in the car; I had to pick him up, put him in the back seat, and shut the door quickly before he slipped out. And once we got moving, he was motionless. Or he peed.

Well, today Alfie walked up to the car without any protest. And then when I opened the car door, before I could move things off the back seat and out of the way, he jumped up all on his own.

At the vet's office, he's been totally overwhelmed and can barely even look at me, much less interact. This time, he was able to train in the waiting room and in the exam room, take treats, meet other dogs, and get boatloads of love from the staff.

And he jumped right up in the car again when we left.

As for the crate training, he only spent a couple hours crated today while I ran some errands. I don't think he peed in the crate. The whole crate is cock-eyed when we get home, and we were concerned that he was panicking or trying to get out. But I watched him with a Kong he found, and he shakes and slings and thrashes that thing around while he plays with it. So I feel pretty certain that's what's going on.

Guess who has the ball?

The current plan is this: I bought a new wire crate and a single-ply plush blanket. I covered half of the crate with a sheet and put the whole thing in our bedroom, along with 2 of the other dogs' crates. Those two dogs are his buddies, much more so than the dogs downstairs-- and down there, he wasn't even crated in the same room with them.

I will continue to crate him in the plastic airline crate for now, with no bedding, unfortunately. In the meantime, we will do some nice, slow, proper crate training to the wire crate in our bedroom. I have a bag of treats handy so that I can plant surprises for him to find and reward him for going in to investigate. Fingers crossed...