Preemptive Strike

Zachary doesn't like thuds, thumps or banging noises coming from outside. Period. He responds to such noises with a series of Gatling gun barks, with a growl thrown in every now and then for good measure.

Beau couldn't care less if there were thuds, thumps, or banging noises outside, but will dutifully back up his housemate with his heavy Howitzer bark.

Since fireworks falls under the category of "bangs", and I didn't care to have my house sounding like a war zone Sunday night, I figured a preemptive strike was in order.

So shortly before the rockets were due to launch, I tuned to the PBS channel on TV (fortuitously replaying the National fireworks display backed by patriotic marching band songs and the 1812 Overture - an advantage to living on the west coast) and cranked it up really loud. Then I pulled out the cookies, and proceeded to march around the house with a pair of oblivious Golden Retrievers marching along right beside me.

We had a grand time.

I have never done much heeling with both of them at the same time, but that night I gave it a try. It was a riot. We were marching forwards, backwards(!), and I was flinging cookies left and right.

Then I switched to some glove retrieves. Two dogs, two gloves at 20' - on your mark... get set... Bring!

Zachary was the clear winner, paws down, and when things slowed down because Uncle Beau isn't the fastest retriever in the west, Zachary "helped" by grabbing the glove from Uncle Beau and quick-timing it back to me.

I'm not sure if either of them learned a darned thing, but there were lots of laughs (from me) lots of cookies (for them) and nary a bark to be heard.

I guess you could say that all was quiet on the western front...

... well, except for "Stars and Strips Forever" blaring away in the background.

4th of July

Scrapbook - 101 Things...

The other night I played "101 Things to do with a Box" using a Basket (Training Levels Four - Trick)

(To read about it CLICK HERE and scroll down until you find "Trick".)

I had been dreading this a bit, as Zachary already plays "101 Things..." with everything I set down in front him, which isn't necessarily a great trait as usually you are only interested one particular thing and not the other 100 he throws in, but I felt I owned him a bit of fun after all that Contacts/Rear-Paw-on-board stuff we've been working on (let's see, that would be on YouTube HERE and HERE.)

Anyway, suffice it to say that "101 Things..." is a game right up his alley. If you want see him in all his video glory, CLICK HERE.

Afterwards, I went through that video frame by frame and was appalled a the number of "Clickable Moments" I missed - a half-dozen or more. Times when he clearly did something different and I missed the difference entirely. Sometimes it was subtle, but often it was a paw switch on his part - doing something with a right front and then trying it later with a left front and me not noticing the change.

Anyway, I grabbed images from the video and put them in a few annotated pages. Time runs top to bottom, left to right, as though you are holding up two film strips side by side. The last page is the final shaping session at the end. Given his "artistic" nature, I didn't want to end the session without reminding him how we normally shape to accomplish something.

(As always, click to see larger)