Earth to Dazzle...come in Dazzle

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I think the allure of his dog food is losing it's magic. I have been having a hard time keeping his attention the past three days. Maybe he's lost some brains along with all his canine teeth :-) Yup, It's official, he has no more needle sharp teeth in the front, only baby molars left. He looks kind of like the Bumble after the dentist got him since the adult teeth have just barely broken the gums :-) He has a hard time keeping the racquette ball in his mouth too, it keeps "squirting" out! LOL

I have started using toys to work on stuff he knows and I get intense focus that way. Almost too intense, his hearing seems to shut off when I have a toy. :-) He stares intensely at me, but doesn't respond to cues right away. He's starting to get a much faster down now, but sit is still in slow motion as though he's a loaded spring and about to bolt at any moment. The raw food still keeps his attention too though. So it's just the kibble. Dang! I just realized I switched the flavor of the kibble three days ago! DUH!! I guess he likes the lamb and rice much better than the fish and sweet potato. Go figure. Well, at least that mystery is somewhat solved. I can't believe I didn't make that connection before just now.

When I do have his attention, he's doing well. But the frequent attention loss drives me nuts. It happened a lot at training class last night, but I think he was just bored. When we work at home, we are constantly working on something. In class, there's a LOT of talking time by the instructor and the down time between activities is hard for him (& me.) I was trying to keep him engaged last night by working on my own thing between exercises, but it wasn't working as well as I had hoped.

I tried a shorter traffic lead, but he was insistent on chewing on it. So much so that I had to switch back to the leather lead to get anything done and then he wanted to chew on the leather lead. Arggg. I was also trying new treats- 100% deydrated turkey bits. I don't think those were going over very well, so that was likely part of the problem too. Who knows, maybe his mouth is hurting and crunching the dried food hurts? I'll just have to keep playing around with it and pray the focus come back!