This is exactly what I saw. I have no idea how this could be comfortable enough to sleep, but apparently it was.  They say “It’s best to let sleeping dogs lie,” but I before I put out the lights I picked up her head and oriented it to a more natural position.

This video is from yesterday, today we successfully worked on getting some more height to her jumps. Some people want to know: How did you teach her that?

Teaching a dog anything is pretty easy, but it does take a fair amount of patience, because the dog has no idea what you’re asking her to do. I imagine that to her, I sound somewhat like the adults in the Charlie Brown specials. So the dog tries to guess, and you have to remain patient while she’s learning what you’re asking of her.

Since I’d taught Rumor to jump a small hurdle (usually some sort of cardboard box), or my arm (if I was kneeling and extended my arm) some time ago, this one was really a no-brainer. It took about 5 minutes to teach her that the hula hoop was just an extension of my arm. Now, I can hold the hoop away from my body and she’ll jump right through it.

And you have to start with the basics. Your dog will never jump through a flaming hoop, nor even a hula-hoop, if you haven’t taught her how to jump in the first place.

After a grueling bath, Rumor likes to nap on the spare bed.  When she was a pup, she was terrified of the bath, and in fact would run and hide for about an hour, under the bed after you dried her off.  She’s still no fan of bathing, but she tolerates it now, most of the time.

She’s also overcome her fear of cars, last week when I was getting her ready to take to the dog part at Orion Oaks, she jumped into the back of my Jeep without coaxing.

When we came back, she greeted us at the door! BUT HOW?

This is what we saw:

You can’t tell from the video since there’s no timestamp, but she managed to do this within 5 minutes of us walking out the front door, I think the actual time on tape was about 4 minutes 30 seconds.

Needless to say, we no longer crate her, we just tolerate the fact that she likes to eat Christmas ornaments on occasion.

That is all.

Here is a picture of Rumor – a few hours after I picked her up from the shelter.

She was so little back then.

Now, much bigger.

She likes to howl at passing sirens, which is quite entertaining. Sometimes, you have to howl for a second, just to get her going…