February 17, 2003
Sleeping with a strategy - when she's right behind
the chair, I can't go anywhere without alerting her...
8:00 p.m.
Dusty had her first outdoors training session this morning. The weather has warmed up quite a bit here – meaning that it’s -5 instead of -20 or -30. I took her over to the park.
There’s an enclosed area for the kids which is generally off-limits to dogs. There were no children present though, my puppy was empty (no risk of doggy poo) and since other dogs don’t go in there, I didn’t have to worry about doggy cooties (Dusty is still a month away from her final set of puppy shots).
I kept her on-leash, even though it was enclosed. I wanted to see how she would behave on-leash and also whether or not she would hold a ‘stay’ with distractions.
She did great – not only did she hold the ‘stay’ but she did it several times back-to-back, part of the time with her friend Fergus-the-Golden-Retriever watching from behind the fence. She walked politely with a loose leash. Good dog!
Of course, she was tuckered out from playing all morning, so didn’t have enough energy to really rip around, but I was still happy about it.
The only thing she wouldn’t do was a ‘down.’ Her ‘sit’ was this half-hearted hovering sit. Yes, she was unhappy about putting her bum in the snow – big sissy! I’m not sure why – she’s done it before.
The only thing I can think of is that when it was really cold, the snow didn’t stick to her bum. Now that it’s warmer, the snow sticks like a blanket to any exposed dog surface.
10:30 p.m.
Dusty did the cutest thing when I got home from hockey a little while ago. I let her out of the crate and she danced around and crawled in my lap to greet me. Then, she got up very purposefully, butted her nose in the small of my back and marched out to the front door. She was ready to outside and she wanted me to hurry up!