In orent's world, down means up (apparently!)

The story of this picture is that I was training Orent while I was sitting on the couch. He was in an "up" against the couch and I wanted him out of my face for a second (he was very focused on me and treats and snuggles). So I said "down!" Orent's thought process was clearly, "if I put my belly on the ground I'm getting farther away from Max, and treats. Maybe "down" means, put your belly where your feet were?" So he sort of slithered his belly up onto the couch and draped as much of himself as possible over me. I know I should have corrected him immediately and put him back on the ground but Kaytee and I were laughing hysterically...

I guess that means we just have to spend 3 times as long working on going from up to down.

I am Yoshi, hear me roar!

Orent got to get dressed up for halloween for puppy class tonight. He went in his cute little (homemade) Yoshi costume. Everyone loved him!

Wanna see some more photos from Halloween puppy class? Head on over to Orent's Facebook fan page and you can see!

A preview of another halloween-costume-clad dog here:

Going for a haircut

Lucky Orent! Today, he got to tag along with me while I got my haircut.

It was a quick clean up, and only took 15 mins. I'd gotten the OK from the salon (Rinse, in case you want to take your business somewhere service-dog-in-training friendly) in advance.

He was great! He hung out in his "sit" so I could reach him to keep feeding him his lunch.

Orent "helps" with the chores

An afternoon at the Ray/Riek household

We all knew he was a pumpkin

Not a lot to say today, but I wanted to share some photos of Orent on our adventure to go pick out pumpkins.

He wasn't sure how he felt about them.

But he stuck by Max's side...

And eventually realized they were a vegetable worth looking up to!

Then we learned how to walk next to a rolling object. Orent wasn't really sure about it, but he did very well. It probably helped that we were armed with a ton of treats!

Then we went into "Goods" (basically the Mennonite Wal-Mart), which was Orent's first trip into a big store. He did so well. Some people wanted to talk to us, but we just kept on walking and sniffing. That is, until we got to the toys section! Then we needed to stop and rest.

We all think we should do more of this in the future. It was a blast!

Max is away, and Orent STILL plays!

Max is away for work for a few days, so all the puppy raising has fallen on me. This morning, he woke me up with his typical "haaaaarm"s and whines. It wasn't so bad though. Orent's now officially a reasonable morning dog! He goes outside, he eats breakfast, then he chills in his box or his crate til I'm awake enough to play with him.

We just finished a rousing game of "hall ball" with his new toy. Here are some videos so everyone can enjoy the game! He was a little slow this AM. Maybe in the future I'll get a video of him tearing down the hallway and running his head into the wall?

Did you see that "drop"? DAMN! And with no treats either. He just did it 'cause I said to. Oh man, he's a smart guy!

This afternoon, we're going to play with our friend Shasta! Photos of that coming soon, for sure.