Plans of Action

Hi Again

Mum has decided that it would be good to have not just a training checklist for me but to make a monthly Plan of Action like she does for her MA studies.  We decided that it would be a good idea to do the Critical Core Games every day until the end of January (we tend to do them most days anyway), along with practising my retrieve and my loose lead walking.  All the other playing which we still do is just an added bonus for me like when we went out in the garden this afternoon and played slice grids, 2o 2o and focus for one jump.  I am still a bit naughty and got too excited in the garden and kept jumping up at Mum after a while instead of sitting ready for another turn.  She doesn't like that so she just went indoors and you know what, she brought Ponto out to play with her instead.  Well I was a bit less cheeky on my next turn.

The Critical Core games are One Call, Collar Grab, Crate Games and IYC (it's your choice).  Seems to me that all of life with Mum comes down to IYC a lot of the time, but now she is being very specific about it with my loose lead walking as I would really prefer to pull her along to wherever I want to go and have sniff.  But I've discovered that the best thing is not to pull because when I pull we either stop, go in circles or turn back and if we are on the way the beach, and I know that road well, I start whimpering when we turn back.  However, it only took us about half an hour to get there this morning, Mum says it only takes ten minutes with my big brother and sisters!   Once we were on the beach she still wanted me to choose not to pull when we reach the sand.  I clicked on this one pretty soon and then sat as soon as she asked because I know that means my lead will come off - just so long as I don't try and run away.  Mum used to use two leads to do this so that if I went when she took my lead off, then I was still stuck because of the other lead.   We call that the two leash trick, I learned it in the house and garden first of all but it was far more difficult for me at first  at the beach or in the park.  One call was great, I love running my fastest to Mum when she calls me.  She often makes different surprises for me when I get there. Sometimes she'll drop a handful of treats over my head, another time we'll have a great game of tug or she runs off so I have to catch up with her.  I have to keep a close eye on where Mum is all the time because she isn't good at always walking just in one direction, and sometimes she hides from me.  We also play collar grab when I get back to her.  Now and then a collar grab means that my lead is going on, but I never know because mostly when we are out on the beach I just go off again.

Mum was really annoyed with me a couple of days after Christmas because I like to steal other dogs' tennis balls.  Well I got this one and I just would not bring it back.  They got it in the end because a young boy (who was with the other dog) grabbed my collar - good thing I know about playing collar grab else it might have frightened me.  Now Mum has determined that I need to learn to play with tennis balls when we're out and bring them back to her just like I do in the house or garden.   Yesterday and today she brought a whole bag full of tennis balls with us.  First she put Ponto's long leash on me then threw the ball.  I didn't go all the way back to her at first, but then I saw that she was having such fun all by herself with two other balls that I better get closer and drop the one I'd got.  As soon as I did that she threw another one for me so I ran back to where she was playing and dropped it and another ball was thrown for me.  I just loved this game, and today and the beach I did it without a long leash on, besides, she didn't have to stand on the lead once to stop me running away I was having too much fun.