A nice surprise

I mentioned previously that Strauss was too tired to whine in her crate following the open house this past weekend. Well, I guess it stuck. She hasn't howled, barked, whined, or whimpered at all since then. She's a strangely good girl.

That said, Strauss has a few bad habits right now that we're working on fixing: jumping up on people, pulling on leash, and counter-surfing.

To curb the jumping, I fold my arms and turn my back to her. Thankfully, Strauss is a good-time gal; she likes for everyone to be having a good time. As soon as she realizes that I am not having fun and not even looking at her, she stops. She then walks around to look up at my face and then wags her tail. Afterwards, of course, Strauss gets lots of praise and lots of love. Who can resist such a considerate girl?

On lead, Strauss is far from the worst I've seen. She tends to pull in the beginning, which can be easily corrected by saying, "No pull, " and then abruptly changing direction. After a couple rounds of this, Strauss becomes much more in tune to me and is careful to see where I am going. So far, she has received good report cards from our dog walker, who described Strauss as, "very friendly! :)"

Ah, counter-surfing. This is the plight of many greyhound owners with their tall, long-faced dogs. We allowed Strauss 10 minutes of free time after dinner last night. She made a beeline to the kitchen, where Jon was cooking, and jumped up on the counter out of excitement. Unfortunately, she soon saw that there were many fascinating objects on there and tried it again on the kitchen table. The good news is that she was quick to jump down as soon as she heard us shout, "No!" The potential bad news is that the little hamster in her head is spinning its wheel now, so we will have to pay extra attention to end this behavior.

Considering that Strauss has been off of the track for a grand total of three days now, she is still making record time to becoming a well-mannered retired racing greyhound.