Boingkin
The Boykin foster is doing well. Eating things, well mainly wanting to eat things has been a struggle still though. He's mostly doing well with ignoring items on the floor that aren't dog stuff (huge win!) but he continues to amaze me with what he will try to get into. Yesterday I left him in his xpen with a nylabone and his bowl of food while I went to get breakfast ready. When I returned I found he had pried off the rubber bottom of the stainless steel bowl and had ingested a chunk. Thankfully only a 1in strip.
I've had others tell me that ingesting items is a normal spaniel thing. I think that's crazy if they are right! How do they not get blockages?!
Boykin's training is going ok otherwise. He's super eager and loves his cookies :) Not jumping up towards hands or just to punch me in general has been a bigger struggle than I can remember with other puppies. He quickly learned to wait for food delivery and give eye contact, but motion from me results in boings again. Boingkin is more representative of his name.
It has turned our pivot training into me teaching the "find heel" while I stand still before I teach "maintain heel" while I actually move around the perch.
Here was Splash from a few weeks ago working on actually focusing on his target and not punching me:
And here he is this past week finally working on me taking a step forward to have him maintain heel. He's still bouncing with my movement but is actually trying to stay on the perch now!
He just spent a weekend with another foster family and did well!
