Sorry, my internet is on the fritz at home and I took all my photos off my camera and put them on my home computer, so I sorta have to be there to do the post correctly. We’ve mostly been hanging out at the park as per usual, though there’s been less park fun in the evenings now that sunset is so early. I seriously need to start waking up earlier, poor Mufaasa is going to loose his mind.
We had another class over at Flying Tails. I’m really enjoying them, though they are about as difficult for me as they are for my dog to understand (seriously, the footwork for Threedles is still hurting my brain). I have discovered a few things to work on besides the stuff we covered in class.
First of all, I did something silly that they always warn you about when you train and I absolutely know to watch out for. When teaching my dog the command “break” (my release command, letting him know to leave a sit, down, or stay) I would sort of jump a bit to encourage him, and now (especially if I’m facing him) he doesn’t think he should move unless I do the jumping thing. *sigh* The things I do to myself
The other thing (and I knew I’d slacked off at this) is our circle work. Basically, teaching the dog to run along side you. At the end of class we were doing an exercise that seemed simple enough. Set up four jumps in a circle, I run in a relaxed manner and Mufaasa jumps beside me, but we couldn’t get past more than two jumps. He was too far behind for me to see him and inevitably he would cut behind me. I’m sure this will get better with grid work, but none of that will get better without my circle work. Last couple of days I’ve been doing it at the park just before I leave and we’re already getting better.
None of this is really awful problems to have. Honestly, every time we go to one of these classes he impresses me with how quickly he learns. Still, we have plenty to keep us busy over the winter months. On the plus side, during our last lesson we found a toy that he absolutely loved to tug right off the bat, which is awesome because he has little to no tug drive with anything else, so even if I have to stick to one toy forever, at least I’ve got one! I tried dragging my butt out to the one store that sells it on Sunday, the store is of course located in the middle of nowhere and it takes me like an hour to get there by bus, and then I arrive and find out they’re closed on Sunday. I proceeded to buy a bottle of wine instead.
Well, here’s some photos of the last few trips to the park, and I’ll post some videos of our game of fetch last weekend. He’s….well, let’s just say he’s a bit ball motivated.
Some of the photos are from Mufaasa playing with one of his bestest buds, Gus, who I’ve mentioned before. Gus has pretty much the exact same personality as Mufaasa (friendly to a fault) and we finally managed to get them to play tug with a stick. Now, when two dogs play tug it’s usually (provided neither has any resource guarding issues of course) a great bit of exercise. Our dogs, it turns out, are too polite. They tugged briefly, but no growling and not a whole lot of intense pulling, they then proceeded to stand, holding the stick in the air and chew it together. It’s like, “Dogs, it’s great that you’ve learned to share, but we’re here for you guys to exercise…”