Take for example the simple behavior of a recall. Olives recall is "Ro, touch". This generally brings her running whether she has a toy or not. Runs to my hand and touches it. More often then not leaving the toy in my hand (Yeah!). Yes, I often feel like a pitching machine, but wow, such a cool feeling...sorta like I have some control (or maybe not).
Just before this photo was taken, I had called. She just looked at me, bit her toy, looked at me again, and lay there. The ignoring behavior resulted in me catching her and putting her in her crate. Hopefully she'll figure out that when she doesn't come "she goes in the crate" rather than, if she doesn't come, "run for the hills cause food mama is coming for ya!"
A good recall about 20 minutes later.
Hmm. We are back in the same position. She must like this spot. The sun is warm. I'm not going to recall now, didn't work last time. Instead I decide to get the toy to interact with her.
I did get some tugging with the toy. Always a winner for me.
She will also recall without a toy. Except of course if you really need her to recall, or a butterfly flies across her path, or the growing grass distracts her, or ..... But often she does come back.
But ALWAYS, she is most happy. Happy to do anything with ya. Happy Happy Happy.
Yesterday she received a package in the mail. Her own purple hiking harness. Well of course we had to try it out. Off to coyote creek trail with Fin and Olive. She was a good girl. I wouldn't say that she listened to me, more likely just walked nicely on the leash in a non reactive way. Fin was on a head halter for the parts where we see people (so she was good) and both just walked in front of me for the 2.5 mile loop. Totally a fun walk and a tired puppy was the result.
We do have to work on her drinking water while hiking behavior. She tried to swim in the water bowl. Poor Fin. Muddy water was the result.
4 comments:
Ahh...puppies. Great pics! Let me know how you do with the "swimming" in the water bowl. Keeper is ten and still puts both front feet and her entire head IN the water bucket (all the way up to her ears) at the agility field, or any other water bowl that's big enough. And after she has a drink, she slings water out of the bucket with her face. I couldn't figure out how to stop it (unless I was standing right there), so we bring our own water bowl everywhere. It's too tiny for her to put her feet in while she drinks. She's a big girl so that was an easy fix...except I'm filling up little water bowls All The Time.
I agree, Just plain Hard work!!
LOL, she just sounds AWESoME, a little live wire!!!! Im loving her!
I can't believe I've fallen weeks behind on reading every blog in my list! Catching up now.
Sounds like hard work indeed--puppies in my experience of any time are exhausting, and were when I was 21, too.
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