Since I my last post on this website, a lot has happened in the world of Gracie. She has started her Wednesday night training classes and those have been going well! Of course, she really does not respond well if you do not have a treat to reward her with, but eventually she will be able to do everything that she has learned without needing the positive reinforcement.

The only thing that I do not like is that my mom is the only one taking the class with her. However, this is not too big of a deal due to the fact that my mom is going to be spending the most time with her after my sisters and I go to college. The other thing is that my mom has been trying to teach us what she has learned, but she has not been able to tell us everything so I think that we are confusing the poor dog.

However, after you spend a chunk of time trying to get her attention (her attention span is about 2 seconds long), Gracie is able to do a lot of simple tasks. For instance, we can now get her to sit by just making the hand motion. She also stays in place very well and will then come when you tell her to come to you. She will also sit in front of a door, allow you to go through, and then will come through on your command. However, none of this happens if she is not focused on you. Keeping her interested in you is a major issue, so we will continue to work on this as time goes by.

Also, two other accomplishments are that she is less crazy inside of the house and she has drastically reduced the amount in which she treats humans as chew toys. Yay! When she does play a little too rough, she has trouble understanding “that’s enough” and seeing that we are done playing, but that is something that we are working on too.

On a sad note, she has a bump behind her ear that has turned out to be composed of cancer cells. We are supposed to wait for a month or so because this is common in puppies, but right now we do not have any clear information about the lump.