next entryDay Of Rest
An introduction
What with all the running around yesterday with Rupert I decide to give him a day at home proper today and see if I can get him accustomed to some more household noises and perhaps give him some more training sessions.
I leave it further 10 minutes this morning before I get up to go and see to him, he was very good last night with not a whisper from downstairs from the moment we left him till I got up this morning. I think he's doing so well with this because Phil came up with a better idea for how we leave Rupert at night time. Up until now we'd put him in his cage, turn the radio on and leave straight away, but last night we took a different tact and put him in his cage and sat downstairs with him whilst watching a bit of TV for 10 minutes or so, and then said good night. This worked really well because he didn't yelp at all whereas before he was for a while and then settled down. I think we will stick to the new regime since he goes to sleep much easier and it appears much less stressful for him.
It's pretty warm here today so Rupert isn't up to doing much in the daytime really - he's too hot. However I did introduce him to the vacuum cleaner for the first time. I wasn't quite sure how to approach this really since our hover is quite loud and a very strange shape and no doubt Rupert wouldn't like it much. I decided in the end to wheel the vacuum out and leave it in the lounge for a while so he could have a sniff around it. I then sat on the floor with Rupert near the vacuum and played with him and his toys to try and get him to interact with the hover as much as possible. After about an hour of doing this I then take the vacuum into the hallway, turn it on and shut the door so the noise wasn't overwhelming to start off with and gradually opened the door more and more until it was fully open. After that I slowly moved the vacuum around. I think Rupert reacted quite well though he was quite weary of it - he seemed much happier when I put him in his crate out of the way, but all in all it went quite well.
No gym for me tonight as it's a rest day so it's quite nice to be able to spend the evening with Phil and to actually eat together, catch up on some TV and just be in each others company for a bit longer that the average 30 mins or so we've had for the past couple of nights.
Posted by Abi on the June 29, 2006 9:35 PM
So you got the dog used to the vacuum. Now yu got to get the vac used to the dog :)