22ish Weeks Post FHO Surgery & IPO Training

Seppel is doing very well, I'm a bit late in blogging but last week we measured his leg and it has grown 4cms! Progress! I feel that the treadmill has really bumped up his progress as he's using the leg to run on it. He is definitely still using it at least 95% of the time, lately he's actually been choosing to trot over holding it up. I am very pleased to have him back to nearly all of his normal activities, and better yet, he is pain free!!!!

Today the weather was pretty crappy so we trained inside of a building. Sepp has been in this building before for obedience and also for the beginning of protection training. Of course, he really didn't want to bark in the building. We did the escape a few times, as well as worked on outs with me at the end of the leash. His outs are fairly reliable even with me not standing next to him. We practiced heeling and Ryan had me take the leash off of Seppel. I didn't write about it, but we did heeling without the leash last week as well.

Shockingly enough, my dog seems to heel better off leash than on. He's such a weird dog. After working on heeling we went outside to try the hold & bark. Typically we practice at blind 6, but today we went to blind 4 instead. I kid you not, my dog barked! After trying it the first time Ryan had me run in with Seppel and give him a loose leash to see what he would do. He did try to go for a bite[naughty!], but I gave him a correction and after that he was really good about standing there barking. Ryan has said a few times that Seppel is just messing with us, and I'm starting to believe it. He knows more than he lets on. It makes for interesting training sessions, I'm just very pleased with his progress in training - at least he's finally doing some kind of barking!