Time has been flying lately.

Running

I haven’t been running much, but I did do a few runs with Ruffie so far. The longest was 6 miles on the trails 2 weeks ago, and the most recent 4.5 on the roads here just today.

Training

We’re progressing pretty slowly. I’ve been doing a roughly 10-15 minute session just before meal times twice a day.

We’re currently working mostly on “stay”. He’s pretty good at staying even when I back up 20 feet away, and sometimes go around a corner. But he is not totally reliable, and often lays down when I make him stay longer than 10 seconds. I was trying to get him to remain sitting but gave up on that because it was hard to explain to him from a distance.

I did try to get him to sit and down at a friend’s place recently, and he totally ignored me with all the stimulation. So I definitely need to work on those basics in more situations outside my house.

Cats

Ruffie still hasn’t spent a lot of time with Nori, our smaller shy cat. Sometimes he chases her when she darts through the living room. We haven’t had any close encounters, though. He also doesn’t bark at them much anymore, though sometimes when I give them fancy food, he’ll get very interested and sit at their gate and stare. It’s helped that Kiko has a high up perch in the living room now that I built the rope ladder and hammock for the cats.

Dogs

We haven’t had any dog visitors lately, so hanging out with Armie when we hiked a few weeks ago was the last significant socialization other than with Remi. Ruffie is pretty well behaved when out for walks, and doesn’t get agitated at all while walking past aggressively barking dogs, even the three dogs that Remi always ends up barking at.

Ruffie also met the neigbors’ german shephards today, and didn’t freak out when one was excitedly in his face for a minute.

I wish Remi would play with Ruffie, but since the first few days, he seems to not want to anymore. Ruffie will occasionally play bow and try to get Remi to run around, but Remi usually just barks or growls at him and then they don’t engage anymore.

People

Ruffie is still scared of most people when he first meets them. We did take him to Dolores Park during Pride, when there were many thousands of people there. He was pretty nervous to walk around the outer edge, but was pretty chill once we sat down. He did get spooked periodically when loud or crazily dressed people walked close to us. He seemed pretty happy overall though.

Then yesterday we took him and Remi to Yizhen and Ryan’s after their Fourth of July party. Ruffie met their 1.5 year old Eli, and was totally fine with him. We all hung out with Remi for a few hours and didn’t have any issues aside from Remi growling at Ruffie a few times when he got too close to him while he was lying down.