Day 3 - Failing at Maslow's hierachy of needs

Three toilet breaks last night, but my quality of sleep was better due to me getting a better feel for her sounds and behaviour. I still slept for about 6 hours, but the quality of sleep was better, so I am more rested.

Sit, stay, break

After our first 'normal' toilet opportunity of the day, I put her back in the crate upstairs. As training, I went downstairs and got myself a cup of tea and prepared her breakfast. Not a peep out of her the whole time. The fact that it is dark outside might have contributed.
Since she is already very well crate trained, I decided it was time to start with the sit, stay, break today. From today on until her last, she will get fed this way.
She was hungry and wanted to attack the food, like she has been doing since she ate solid food– but there I was, the big meanie who would not let her. After a struggle of maybe 2 minutes– it is hard to tell with a piranha going for the food– she decided to give up and sit down. Then came the eye contact: "What do you want me to do?", and boom! I gave her the okay, and she dug in. I immediately noticed that she was eating more slowly as well. I put my hand next to her face while she was eating, and not a peep– she didn't care.
The second and third repetitions were a bit shorter, but still a bucking horse. The fourth was very quick. Within seconds, she looked at me and gave me a whimper, but she looked at me.

New approach and potential warning signs

Yesterday, on our last 'official' walk of the day, we ran into another pup– a Doodle-like breed. This dog was a few months older than Tera. In a harness, and barking and lunging at her. Tera started to ramp up a bit, getting a "wruf!" out. I interrupted her on a low level– she responded, looked at me and I immediately started to 'run' backwards, luring her to me. She came running, and she got rewarded like crazy.
The experiences yesterday with the two dogs, and my unwillingness to dish out high level corrections at this age made me shuffle my plans a bit. Her obedience is still at a starter level– as can be expected, so I cannot lean on that. As mentioned yesterday, I started the 'I am awesome!' routine, combined with her instinct to follow me when I leave. When a person walked by on the sidewalk across the street, she obviously looks at them– I make some silly noise or tap her tail to catch her attention. When she looks, I go crazy and shuffle backwards, drawing her in. Praise and treats follow.
On later 'walks', I noticed her 'wruffing' at other dogs, even though they did nothing to her at all. I will keep a very close eye on this. From my 3 days of getting to know her, with the proper leadership, she will become a courageous dog, with the wrong approach, a reactive nightmare. Positive point, a 'wruff' is a low enough level of excitement that I am confident that a lower-level correction will suffice. I should be able to nib this in the bud pretty quickly.
As a side note to all of this, she has really come out of her shell; very playful and energetic. As I wrote yesterday, the back garden is prepped and ready.

Be a dog

Since I do not want her to bounce around inside the house, but since she needs to burn off all this puppy energy, the back garden is the best and safest option.
I really love her personality; as the breeder already told me, she is a little adventurer. No fear or apprehention– the back garden was ready to be explored. Right now it is new, so sniffs have to be had, but this is where we take the zoomies and drain her energy.
Here as well, 'I am awesome'. Every time she checks in, she gets praise and a scratch.
Since there are lots of different surface textures in my garden, she will get socialised that way as well.
The back garden is the place where she should tire herself out. The last few times I had to make the executive decision to put her in the crate against her will. Once in, she settles without a peep, but I want her to go in herself as much as possible.

Obedience and distraction

Since the back garden is a higher distraction than my living room, letting her be a dog and getting familiar with it, will help with leveling up her obedience training as well.
We are not there yet. Yesterday was a rest day for her, so obedience was shelved. I got a few reps in, but nothing spectacular.
Today, I started with "sit". After some fumbling with the luring, I got the hang of it. The issue at the moment is the clarity of communication; since I have laminate flooring, it is slippery and she slides from a sit into a down. I will do the rest of this training on a rug, so she understands that I want a sit, and not a sit-and-slide. Once she as the hang of it– she can sit on the flooring, I have seen her do it– I will transition to the floor again. "Sit" is "sit" on every surface.
Teaching her name is going smoothly. I wouldn't say she fully gets it, but we are getting there. I would like to say that it is going according to schedule, but I have none for obedience.
During the 'I am awesome' bits, I could not resist to work on the recall. I plan to use a whistle and my own whistling to do this. If I am 100% sure she is committed to come to me, I whistle. I am very careful with this, since this is a command that can save her life one day, so I want as little failed reps as possible. My main goals as of now are her name and "sit", but I will use whatever opportunity I get for freeshaping.
Note to self: introduce her to things first, before training her; the rug was scary and new, and in a part of the room she hadn't been yet. Good for socialisation, but not training.
I got very little training done today, due to her high energy, she is too bouncy to pay much attention to me. No big deal, there is no rush at all.

Socialisation

She is used to me, my house, the toilet area and her crate. She met a few dogs– some encounters better than others. Today the plan was to sit at the side of a road on a bench. It is Sunday, and the road is not the busiest. I prepared her partly for this by putting on traffic sounds when she was in the crate. No sirens, horns or brakes fazed her. Awesome.
We sat on the bench for around 5-10 minutes and Tera could not have cared less about traffic if she tried. Big bus? No issue at all. This is for a large part thanks to the breeder, who lives on a farm, and pretty much all day every day big trucks and tractors pass by.

I have also been touching her paws, ears and opened her mouth to watch her teeth– the only reaction is when I touch her mouth; she is still mouthy, so she wants to mouth me.
Since I had the idea that she might have some issues weeing (she can try to wee a few times every opportunity– no indication of pain, whatsoever), I checked her privates for irregularities. Nothing weird, and the little champ did not care.
Why do I mention all this touching? Because of the vet. If the schedule is correct, she should get round 2 of her shots next week. I want a dog that does not care about being touched and does not fear the vet.

Abraham Maslow, I feel stupid

Air, water, food, shelter, clothing, sleep and reproduction– these are in the most fundamental part of Mazlow's hierarchy of needs– things every human needs for a good life.
Obviously Tera has her own 'clothing' in the form of her coat, and she is way too young for reproduction. That leaves air, water, food and shelter.
- She breathes. Air: check
- She eats like a pig. Food: check
- She loves her crate. Shelter: check
- Water? oh dear...: f*ck!

There was always a bowl of water outside of the crate on the floor, where she on occasion licked a bit from. She is on a BARF (Biologically Appropriate Raw Food) diet, which is wet on its own, so dogs drink less compared to the dry kibble. As I discussed in my blog yesterday, she is super energetic when out of the crate, and I think she just forgot about drinking in those moments. I didn't have a bowl in her crate, since she mostly sleeps in there– especially yesterday.
I mentioned that she did not wee a lot since last night– a few drops at most– so I started to think what could be wrong. She is as lively as can be, so I doubt she is ill. Her privates looked fine, so at least no clear inflammation.
I tried putting a small bowl of water in the crate, and within a few minutes it was empty. Message received: I am an idiot. My humble apologies, dear Tera. It won't happen again.

Since her behaviour has been amazing yesterday and today, I do see this as no harm done– other than me feeling like a moron. About an hour after drinking a bunch, and every time after, she had a nice, normal wee again.

My plan for tomorrow is to find a way to drain her puppy energy. She did not have much of a toy drive Friday, but perhaps now that she came out of her shell, she will chase something or gently play tug outside with me. Today I saw her getting overexcited a few times, so I had to crate her to cool her off– something she did almost immediately.

Did you ever forget something as elementary as enough water? What was your dumbest mistake?