garage sale!

Being summer it is garage sale season! There was a big benefit garage sale going on that a family friend was sponsoring (with some of our stuff in it, too) and Mango and I camped out there all weekend (Thurs, Fri, Sat), which explains why I'm a bit late on the blog this week.


the sale!

Over the course of the weekend we worked on loose-leash heeling, greeting strangers and in general staying as calm as a puppy can be. He is improving, but slowly. The biggest problem I am finding with him is with greeting people. Every time someone goes to walk up to him, he jumps up and tries to get all over them, lick their hands (he used to bite D:) and in general get their attention. I've tried telling him to leave-it, make the person approaching him walk away (taking the 'treat' away) and completely removing him altogether, but it isn't seeming to work.

And it's not just when he's sitting down, either. We can just be walking along and someone will be walking as well and, like a magnet, he'll veer off towards them. He's gotten better, to the point where he can recover quickly, but nonetheless this is one of his new biggest behavioral issues (besides chewing inappropriately.) This is another one of those things I never would have thought of before going to raise a leader puppy.

fun in the backyard

Now that Mango is getting older, we often have him and our dog, Lance, play outside together. Because he's a young, energetic puppy and the July heat is relentless, we have a kiddie pool out back (we got the idea from the puppy event we went to!) And, needless to say, he loves it. Whenever we get outside, the first thing he does and goes to get his favorite toy, a big orange bucket, and proceeds to lay down in the pool, dirtying it up with his muddy puppy feet.

The other day, my Mom was out back watering the yard and discovered Mango's new favorite toy; the hose!



Now we can't even hope of using the hose while he's outside. Wherever you point the hose at, he immediately runs after it. He's definitely a water dog!

One point to mention on this issue as a warning; he did find that if he chews the hose and gets a hole in it, water comes out of two spots, making it twice as fun! Now I have to replace my mom's 25$ hose because he wanted to have a good time. Perhaps too much fun wasn't necessarily a good thing.

eating his leash

So a couple days ago, my best friend and I decided to go to a movie together, and what better time to expose Mango to sitting calmly than at a movie theater? Little did we know, maybe it was too soon for this energetic puppy to be expected to sit through all of Toy Story 3 without causing a mess!

Walking into the theater was a bit challenging, because Mango kept pulling to see whomever was closest. It didn't help when they would run up to him saying "Oh what a cute puppy! Come here, puppy!" either. Somehow, we managed to walk into the door without too much hassle. Once inside, I had to constantly look at the floor and remind him to 'leave it' because of all of the popcorn and candy on the floor! This was excellent practice, and he did fairly well for all of the distractions.

The movie was amazing. This being true, I didn't check up in Mango as often as I should have. I was quite surprised that he was doing as well as he was; no noises, fairly stationary, no messes on the floor. When we got up to leave, both of us were, well, not surprised. When we entered the theater, we had a four foot leash. Leaving, we had a six inch leash. The craziest part was not that he chewed through the leash, however; it was that the leash was completely gone! For days afterwords we waited for him to get sick, and even called the vets ahead of time to give them a heads-up. He never got sick, however! Lab puppies sure do have a resilient stomach!

going down stairs

Stairs have always been a huge problem with Mango. A couple weeks into our adventure with Mango, I brought him over to a friend's house to climb up the stairs. At my house, the stairs are really steep and linoleum, too slippery for little puppy feet. In contrast, the stairs at his house were carpeted and gradual, a much better first experience. Even though they were short, they were still taller than Mango by several inches. Going up them was hard, but was nothing compared to going down! He complained a little bit, but in general was okay with the 'up' part. When we turned around to come back down the stairs, the poor puppy stopped dead in his tracks. I tried to coax him down with me by his side, but he still wouldn't move. Still holding on to the leash, I walked to the bottom (four whole steps) and everyone there made as much noise as possible to encourage him to follow me and come down. He tried and tried, but couldn't make it down by himself. I had to pick the little guy up and carry him down the stairs. They were just too tall for him!

We continued to work at it, every time successfully going up but failing to come down without me carrying him. A couple weeks after our first attempt, after Mango put on a couple more inches, we tried once again. He was just tall enough to be able to go up the stairs without it becoming an adventure, and with enough coaxing in loud, excited, high-pitched voices (and plenty of "good boy"-s) he made it down all by himself! From that moment on, he was climbing stairs like no tomorrow.


just an eye-breather from all this text :D Mango and I at the local breakfast joint, Bryan's. We frequent there so often we get a discount just for bringing him in!

That is, until he got his eye on the linoleum stairs. These stairs were much steeper, as well as there being many more of them. With the same process of him having to grow taller, more brave, and lots of coaching, he eventually made it up. Once again, going down was a different story. When he was four months old, he was finally big enough to be able to traverse these stairs. It took him and I about 45 minutes to get down the stairs, with us going down every one sideways. (They were too steep to go down headfirst...too scary!) Every time going down took less and less time, until he could make it down all by himself. Now, we have to put a gate up to keep him from going down and messing with the laundry.

The last and final obstacle for Mango as far as stairs was when my friend moved to a new house. As soon as you walked in the doorway there was a long stair-case that led to the basement. Although these stairs were about as steep as the carpeted stairs, they were linoleum, led to a dark and unknown place, and had no backing! Once Mango got a good look down those stairs, he was scared out of his mind. Whenever we walked into the house, he would hardly go past the doorway because he could see the basement, and was afraid of the stairs. It took him until he was about six or seven months old to be able to go down these, with the same coaching and love as before. Only this time, going up was the problem. Previous to this, he would go up by pushing his paw to the very edge of the step. Now, he would fall through the back! He had to re-learn his entire strategy for climbing up stairs in order to clear this obstacle.

Although all this took time and some TLC, it was worth it for Mango to be able to do his job. Its the little things that you wouldn't realize are scary for puppies (like stairs)!

more memories!

All the way back in February, just a month after we picked him up, Mango got a little bump on his bottom eye-lid. When looking through some old pictures, I stumbled on this....


The picture of Mango after he came back from the vet's.

The doctors came to the conclusion that he was probably scratched by a cat. (We have three at home.) The poor puppy, it looked so bad! They ended up lancing his eye, it was simply a swollen gland. I was so worried that it was going to make my leader dog blind!

And poor puppy, this wasn't his last trip to the vet, either. Because of this incident, I was scared to death they weren't going to let me take Mango back after he was sick the second time!

I'm also going to take this opportunity to show how much he''s grown since February.


Mango about 5 seconds ago! I pulled out the old gate as comparison.


Mango in April. He was about 5 and a half months old.

nostalgia :)

The following is another post re accounting for my experiences with Mango before I started keeping this blog.

When Mango was about four months old, him and I had a week-long sleepover at a friend's house. Up to this time there were inconsistencies in his training at my house due to several factors, but this was not a problem over here. Mango got alot of very much needed intensive training, and in this short period of time he learned 'sit' much better, he learned 'down', and 'come' became alot more consistent as well. Also, we took on alot of training to curb his habit of biting. We tried several methods, but the one we found the most helpful is as follows:

Treat the puppy as his mother would treat him. For example, squeal when his mouth touches your skin and pull away, ignoring him. All he wants is attention, so when he figures out that biting deprives him of this, he will start to stop biting.

Continue to do this for longer and longer. If it is not working (which with Mango, this was the case most of the time) get up and walk away completely.

If this still is not working, 'growl' at him by scolding in a very deep voice. If anything, he will get the hint by knowing that you're angry with his behavior.

Another thing I learned during this time was a way to curb his eating so quickly. Probably due to the fact that he's a hungry boy whose only fed 3 times a day, whenever he went to eat he gobbled his food down so fast I was afraid he would hurt himself or throw up (which he sometimes did!)
The way I slowed down this bad habit was by feeding him his bowl of food by hand. Not only did this help him to slow down, but it re-established my authority as 'pack leader'.
i also would pour his food onto the floor, so that he would be forced to slow down with his eating. This was not as effective, however, because it also caused him to scramble to eat his food so that my other dog wouldn't eat it. I don't recommend this as being an effective strategy for curbing this behavior.
As he's gotten older, he has slowed down A LOT. I don't know if this is due to what I mentioned above or simply because he has matured, but whatever the case these strategies did help to some extent.

The family that we stayed with is ALWAYS on the move. Because we were always out and about, when we got home Mango was exhausted and only wanted to sleep. (This is also the week I learned that a tired puppy is a happy puppy :D) We had a lot of adventures, including going to a doctor's office, a dance studio, up stairs (because they don't want him going up an escalator), elevators, many, many different restaurants, strange houses, parks, play-dates with other puppies, and way too many more to mention.

The biggest adventure we had was at the library. The owner of the house we were staying at (and also the biggest help with Mango and his training!) is a teacher at an elementary school in Rochester. We took an evening and actually visited the library. Because it was vacant (it was a vacation), we allowed Mango to run around inside. This library is HUGE, mind you. This may seem juvenile now when compared to the progress Mango has made, but he would actually COME and STAY when called! He got the chance to run around inside and play with his toys, and he didn't pull any books off of shelves or any other bad behavior. This was towards the end of our stay, and the progress that he showed in that single evening was absolutely amazing. That night he also got to go up in an elevator, and we also practiced loose-leash walking.

Memorial Day Parade!

I realized that I never posted anything about our adventure at the Memorial Day parade this year! Every year our community throws a parade for this very important date, and it is the biggest parade of the year. There were fire trucks, horses, lots and lots of cars, and people throwing candy, which he very happily 'left it' for me. It was so very scorching hot that day, we got very creative with ideas for how to drink water.

Mango did very, very well with behaving. This includes listening to my 'leave it' when the kiddies were throwing candy, sitting pretty for pictures and standing when I wanted publicity for Leader Dogs. Although we didn't walk in the parade, he did wear his jacket and quite a few people asked me about the Leader Dog program. Many were impressed when they saw how tolerant he was of the firetrucks that went by with their lights and signals on, as well as loud motorcycles and other distractions that normally would have startled a dog. This is one of Mango's biggest strengths; being tolerant to loud, frightful noises. He was also very calm around the horses that walked in the parade, one such distraction I was afraid he would be uneasy about.

It was an amazingly hot day, which made this hard for both him and I to sit on the side of the road with no shade, but somehow we did it! In general, Mango did extremely well. It was great exposure time for him and loud noises, and he fared amazingly. He's growing up so fast!