Calm and Quiet and new Kennel

Last night Kobi and I tagged along to a soccer game my fiance's friends invited him to. I thought it would a fantastic opportunity to work on him being calm and quiet in an outdoor environment with a lot of noise and movement.

I packed up Kobi's bed, some high value treats (homemade freeze dried liver)  and his tug toy. Turns out the bed was a little unnecessary as he was much happier on the grass. But we got there and got settled as quickly as we could. Those first few minutes are always the hardest because all Kobi wants to do is run and meet people and play. Once I got his bed out he knew what was going on and though reluctant, laid down and started taking treats.
For the first half hour I was pez dispensing like a machine just to keep him from barking. The second half hour he had settled down enough that I was able to get some pictures! At that point though my fiance was playing closer to our side of the field and it was funny watching Kobi keeping his eyes glued on him to see what he was doing. But he stayed laying down and stayed quiet!

Kobi found himself a huge stick to play with, not unsual

I also bought a new kennel for us yesterday. I had found a cheap plastic one on Kijiji that I have just bought the week before, but I quickly discovered when picking it up, plastic crates are massive and aren't the best thing to have to lug around and put together. So I knew I either wanted a wire crate or a fabric one, but needed to keep an eye out for a relatively cheap one. Turns out one was spotted at winners! So yesterday morning I went to check it out. I must of looked like a crazy person trying to assemble this huge crate in the middle of the pet aisle at Winners but I needed to be sure Kobi would fit inside. So for $50 I found a large fabric crate that will be perfect for agility. It's nice and vented for those warm days, and it has a roof opening so that taller dogs can sit straight up in them (I'm not sure how well that would work but for me it's nice to be able to throw treats in from above while keeping the door closed.
The only thing I don't like about this crate  is that the door is on the long side of it rather then the short end. Kobi is still convinced that the crate will eat him, but at least with the plastic crate it was easy to toss some high value treats to the very back and have him go look for them and then work on getting him to turn around in the crate and finally lay down in it. We were making some serious progress with the plastic one but are now back ti square one with the fabric one. The problem with the side opening is that Kobi only needs to get his front paws into find the treats and I don't want to just shove his back legs in (as tempting as it is) because I know it'll freak him right out. I'll take my time and hopefully he'll learn to love it. Hopefully soon because I would like to start taking it to class with me so that he can learn to relax in his crate while other dogs are around.