Since Trice got sick a few weeks ago, he has been cooped up indoors all day, only let outside to go #2, he goes #1 on pads we leave in certain areas of the house. The Vet said not to let to make sure he doesn't get sick again and until he gets the last set of his puppy shots and rabies shot. So you can imagine how much energy Trice has when we get home from work. The most activity he was getting was us training him. So far he has learned how to sit, stay and sometimes lay down, we're still working on that one. Even though we'll go through a training regime at night he'll have so much energy leftover that he'll frap wildly for a good 5-10 minutes or he'll chew the heck out of his toys.

As of last Friday 10/21, Trice has finally gotten his last set of puppy shots and rabies shot so now we can finally take him out of the house and on good long walks...or so we thought.

Walks have become a frustrating experience from time to time. Sometimes its very easy and he'll follow without a hitch or sometimes he'll just plop his little butt on the floor and not move.

We've tried different things for his walk such as a harness and the gentle leader.
- The harness seems to give him Trice all the control. He will constantly lunge forward and pull to get to where he wants to go and if we try to change his direction..."plop" goes his butt and there goes any walking. I've come to not like the harness because it is hard to train him to walk next to us. He is focused on what he wants to do instead of what we want him to do.
- The gentle leader seems to be more successful although getting it on him is not the easiest thing to do. When on the gentle leader, he does not lunge forward or pull but he tries to rub his face into the grass to get it off. Definitely not good, especially when he rubs his face in grass where other dogs poop. One thing I did notice is, instead of lunging forward or pulling, he following a few feet back behind us and as we walk a few feet he'll plop down and not want to walk.

As far as the progress of his walks now he seems to be excited to get out of the house and out the front gate but as we start walking after that the plopping begins. When we first started walking him a week ago it was the toughest task becuase he just did not want to walk next to me. He would just stop and plop. We began to introduce treats to get him to move forward. He would walk about 3-5 feet and we would treat him and he would plop back down. Getting down to this area we normally walk him to would take a good 10 minutes. As time progressed the treats would be less and he would walk a lot farther on his own without us having to do anything. He's definitely still a work in progress.

Another thing that he has introduced to us as of late, is his barking. He is beginning to bark more and more. At home he'll go to our 1st floor window and look outside and bark at anything he hears or sees moving. It could be a bird flying, the gardener, etc. On our walks he'll bark at someone getting out of their car, a jogger or a moving leaf. I believe since he is still young, (almost 5 months), things are still new to him so his initial reaction is to bark. I'm just hoping he's not an insecure dog because then that'll be mean a lot more work for us in the future.

Outside our condo there is a little fenced in area where people bring their dogs to play. A neighbor of ours is there almost every day during the week with her little puggle and her daughters dog, not sure what breed though, but both are males. After Trice got his rabies shot, the wife brought him there to see how he would react with other dogs. Trice seemed to want to play but as he got close to the two dogs he would run away. As he got more comfortable, he would be close to them, sniffing the ground but got weirded out when the dogs tried to sniff him. He even tried to bite one of the dog's ears. The puggle who seemed to be more interested in Trice, would slyly come around him and try to hump him. Trice was not having that at all. Hopefully it didn't traumatize him too much. LOL.

This past Sunday we took Trice with us to a huge park for our nephew's birthday. The wife decided to put the harness on him because we didn't want him on the gentle leader all day since he wouldn't be walking all day. BAD IDEA. Trice was pulling everywhere. He would go anywhere he wanted and for him to listen to any of our commands was out the door. Again...I hate the harness.

Trice would find bones left from previous BBQ's in the grass and try to chew on it, he was barking at some of our family, barking at the water cooler, and any random person not associated with our party that was passing by. The good thing was he was GREAT with the kids at our party. He would let them pet him and play with him and he would not jump on any of them. But boy did he wear us out! We were outdoors for a good 7 hours and luckily when we got home Trice went to his little corner where his bed is an crashed. I think he was just overstimulated and was so excited to see this new world he was exposed to.

Trice overall has been a great dog. We couldn't be happier. He's so cute and he gets compliments from everyone who meets him.