One week down, one more to go

Another night of studying...sigh.

Can we please play now?

Happy with a bully stick (it lasted for the crucial crunch time before 3 exams)
In her self imposed torture position, under my desk
Pouting under the bed

It's been one week of exams and I'm happy to report that Abby knows no new tricks! She does now have a music video though...

Abby's music video

She has been one bored puppy this week, and has taken to making pitiful whining noises while staring at me from behind my doorway curtain. The only thing that seems to stop her is making her leave the room whenever she starts whining (it got un-cute reallly fast, about 2 hours into studying for microbi). We've been going to the field every morning for at least 45 minutes of frisbee, so that gets her tired enough to sleep for the next couple of hours. We have a short lunchtime play session, and then a half hour evening walk and some training games. She seems very confused as to why I'm home all the time. All morning she expects me to leave for class, and jumps up and runs into her crate at every one of the "signs" - if I close my laptop, brush my teeth, get dressed...It's hard to convince her that I'm not leaving.

It's funny that she still runs into her crate when she knows I'm leaving, since she never gets locked in there anymore. My roommates say that she comes out a couple of minutes after I leave, but as I'm leaving, she is always curled up all the way at the back. She won't come out, doesn't want me to touch her. She is most definitely pouting. When I'm gone she sleeps on my bed and will only come out of my room if coaxed. Such a mama's girl! She won't even play with anyone if I'm not home, especially now that Tryp is gone. He was able to get her to play even when I wasn't home.

Abby's doing pretty well with strangers/dogs while on leash right now, but a lot of that is that I have much better management. She has started looking at me automatically when we see people. I still have to convince her to look at me when there are other dogs. She hasn't lunged at anyone since moving here in September. There was one incident on the field where a man started racing around suddenly to try and get his dog to play, and Abby noticed before I did. She ran after him and jumped on him.

Here's where we are right now with the common triggers/issues:
-people walking past us: she'll automatically look at me most of the time; looks really nervous when it's dark out and people come towards us
-dogs while on leash: we do a detour of at least 15 ft and I can get her to look at me; dogs barking at her will get a reaction from her 50% of the time
-dogs playing fetch: she can be called off the less hyper/enthusiastic ones, but still having a lot of trouble if the dog plays ball Abby-style (ie. super hyped up and excited)
-skateboards: haven't been around one in awhile, but last time we were too close and she screamed and spun
-squirrels: no hope whatsoever of getting her to look at me if they're close, but she will sit while staring at the squirrel

On a side note, Abby is quite good with puppies (off leash only, on leash with other dogs has been a disaster almost every time). There are three yellow lab puppies that go to the field and she is very tolerant of them (much more tolerant than I'd expect her to be). An adorable 10 week old border collie puppy visited yesterday, and she was very gentle with him (except when she smacked him on the head for jumping on me, then play bowed to him...weirdo).
She is much less tolerant with 'teenage' dogs, around 5-9 months. She tells them off constantly. She has been good with other dogs on the field lately, as long as we only go when there aren't big groups of dogs (we went when there was a big group during the snow, which was a mistake. One dog went for Abby after Abby was bossy, and Abby in turn went for every dog within reach, one at a time).

One last thing: She will finally play tug with her leash (funny that I tried so hard to teach her when I tried for years to un-teach Sam). She'll only do it on the 'tug' command though, and it's handy for when I want to play with her but didn't bring a toy. We went to a field tonight and I ran around with her and practiced having her not jump on me (a lot of 'off's, stopping, turning into her...and a couple of accidental leg lifts as she was starting to jump). We alternated running with leash tugging, which she really enjoys.