Work

Most of the readers of this blog know me personally and have likely met Stryker. If you do not fall into this category, however, here's a little bit more about her life currently.

I work as a veterinary technician, typically 4 days a week. Stryker usually comes with me at least 3 days because then I make time to work with her. I can fit in a training session before work, at least one on my lunch hour, and more often than not we go on a public outing after work. Lately she's been getting playtime with one of my bosses young labs at lunch. I was a good trainer and didn't even substitute that for a training session today (I brought my camera with us outside only to realize my battery was still on the charger, whoops).

When I first started bringing her to work, I'm pretty sure my co-workers were ready to kill me. She was noisy, she beat her crate door, and oh yeah-she was noisy. I've always left her with an assortment of toys, chews, and treats. In the beginning she didn't know what food toys really were so they were often left untouched by lunch time. I brought them out with us at lunch and she started to enjoy the food toys in my presence. She's quite good at food toys by now and they're worked on immediately!

I've been changing the location of her crate somewhat lately, usually rotating between two spots as well as giving her some time in an outside run if the kennel dogs are inside. While it's added to the initial barking if a dog walks by, she's still settling pretty quickly after the episode. 98% of the time people can walk by without much more than a tail wag, a huge improvement over 0% of the time in the beginning (I assume she hoped each and every person walking through would release her).

She noticed another of my bosses dogs, Cappy, on the other side of the gate.

All this is to say that all but one of my co-workers were able to be in the break room, eat lunch, watch tv, and socialize without Stryker uttering a single noise. One even commented... "I had no idea there was a dog back here!"

She'd just met Cappy through the baby gate!

After her play session with Crow, she accidentally met one of the other Labs, as well as the Greyhound. (Due to the gate below being open. Thankfully both of those dogs are incredibly low-key about meeting other dogs and are Good Dogs in general.)

Ram is really good at sleeping. He's also got wonderful dog-dog skills.

Not-so-little Stryker was wonderful and wanted to keep playing with everyone. Today is the first day I asked for impulse control exercises during play. There was some initial vocalizing (whines) but she quickly learned the faster she sits and offers eye contact, the faster she gets to go play again.

She slept well the rest of the afternoon and we even visited Tractor Supply tonight on the way home from work. This is the first time I've taken her out in a store and she was absolutely thrilled by all the sights/sounds/smells. She was incredibly confused by the giant broom a worker was pushing so we watched it together and "talked" our way through it. She never stopped eating, she always turned to me after the click, and never went over the top trying to get people to pet her.

She should be tired, but she's not... :)

I AM the cute!