The Magster has had an eventful couple of days.

Sunday was in the mid-30's, so it felt like a heat wave (not to worry, the temperate dropped and we got a few more inches of snow last night. It's never going to end.)

We went for a long walk with Maggie, and decided to check out the middle school that we'd learned about the day before. Of course, there were no other dogs or people there, since normal people don't go to play at the park when it's frozen over and 35, but it was nice to have it all to ourselves. We walked Maggie to the far side of the school lot near the fence and let go of her leash. She didn't run off, so that was a good start to this experiment. She didn't do anything extraordinary, but she did keep an eye on us and after she ventured far enough that we called out to her, she came back to us. A good first outing on her own.

We have a picture from our yard, so you can see outside she's a very different dog - standing upright and very much alert and curious.

Also, I've heard some comments about the lack of photos with me in them, so I've included a photo that Kat snapped later that afternoon. Maggie and I were both tuckered out and took a nap on the floor.

Now, Monday night (last night) was by far the funniest thing we've seen so far from Maggie. We took her out for her final bathroom trip for the evening. The snow was coming down pretty hard, and it was one of those really wet snows with the big flakes. We wanted to see what, if anything Maggie would do with the snow falling, so we took her leash off in the backyard and just stood on the stairs to the deck watching her.

She started off slowly, doing her usual walk this way a few steps then walk back that way a few steps, sniff here, repeat. Finally she took care of business, and then we saw her playful nature start to come out. She would climb one of the small snow piles in our yard, leap at a chunk of snow then do a 180 and run off. She repeated this a few times, with a couple brief rounds of "snap at my own tail". She was just getting started though. She eventually was running all over the yard, up and down snow mounds, kicking up snow all over the place. She would have looked perfectly natural on top of a snowboard zipping around the yard.

I wish we'd gotten video of her running around, you just wouldn't believe it. It was so great to see that she had such a playful nature , one that we're sure will eventually come out more regularly. After about 20-30 minutes of fun, poor Maggie had wiped herself out, but for once she truly was just having fun.

This isn't the best photo, but at the end of her romp around the yard last night, a chunk of snow fell off of the house and landed right on top of Maggie's head.

We decided not to put Maggie in the crate today and instead put her in the master bath. We wanted to see if she could be trusted for an extended period of time in a larger room, and figured there wasn't much damage she could do in there. I'm pretty sure if we put a chalk outline around Maggie, she'd still be in it when we got home from work - so all was safe in the bathroom. We'll keep doing this for a while and see how it goes.

We just met with a dog trainer this evening, Jeff Millman (http://www.jeffmillman.com/). Jeff couldn't have been nicer. He came to our house, and in a little over an hour really helped us - both by giving us useful tips for helping Maggie and making us feel better about things we've been doing (or not been doing). We didn't really work with Maggie on anything, this was more a training session for us.

We were mainly concerned that we were doing the right thing carrying Maggie around, bringing her food/water, standing her up by propping her legs up, etc. Jeff assured us that we weren't in any way babying her or hampering her development and that she just needs some TLC and to take everything very slowly. If that means carrying her or bringing the food dish to her, then that's fine. He also gave us some great tips on using positive reinforcement to help train her to respond to commands to stand up and cooperate on getting outside.

So, for now we'll work on the baby steps to get Maggie to understand she's in a good place and it will all be OK. Depending on where that takes us we'll possibly look into more training once she comes out of her shell more.