Hopefully, I can manage my time better this week. Still trying to figure out how it is all going to work with the dogs and the new job. So far it is OK, but felt bad that the dogs didn't get more exercise last Wednesday and Thursday. I will have to work late again this Thursday so will see if I can come up with a better plan this week.
This morning I took both dogs out at the same time at the park (in the dark). Gave them a few long throws, which Gata retrieved. Tor does his best to beat her to the ball but he gets a little distracted by his desire to chase her ;-) Gata is definitely still schooling him a little but it won't be much longer ...
Then we walked around the park with the dogs off leash to go to the bathroom. I was also taking advantage of the opportunity to practice recalls with each dog. Interestingly, Gata decided that Tor should not be allowed to recall to me. She convinced him that he should not get too close to me and lodged a very loud and physical complaint directly with me as well. Definitely having some jealousy issues both ways with these two. They are both very possessive of me and very obvious when they disapprove of my interactions with the other. This is definitely something that I will have to address. I'm sure that at higher levels of activity it will be worse so need to think of several different options. Can almost certainly use food treats to deal with low level stuff but Gata has a tendency to lose all food drive when she is really active so may need to come up with something else to use in those situations. Definitely need to think about this some more.
Stopped at MPSC after work again today. Let both dogs run around a little to start out. Both needed a potty break and I like to let them be dogs a little. It is a safe place for those sorts of things :-)
Tor: used the harness and a back-tie to work on outs again. He definitely gets way more jacked up playing tug out there than he does in our park and his outs suffer. It could be a new location, the pressure of the back-tie, the frustration of misses or ??? that is causing the conflict with the "Out". I suspect that it is a combination of things but don't want to reinforce it. He is a pretty "tough" cookie for such a young dog when he wants to be, so need to rethink this. I think it might be better to focus on continuing to out everything he picks up at home and do a lot more of it in our park with different toys and forget about doing it elsewhere or with other people for awhile. I'm a little afraid that he's going to get too determined hold onto whatever before that "out" becomes a reflex.
Ended with a little bit of work on the right side blinds with right-handed turns again. He started to get it and I was able to move farther and farther away from him. He thinks this is great fun and loves to chase the ball. Eventually, I will reward blinds with a bite pillow but for now the ball serves the purpose of continuing to build the pattern and speed that I want for the blind search. He was definitely pooped by the time we finished up.
Gata: She was again jealous of the work that I had done with Tor. So I put the harness and back-tie on her and worked on her barking a little. She has a tendency to stutter in her barking, which loses us points. This is the first time that I've worked her on barking so didn't ask for too much. She got it pretty quickly and the first few rewards were pretty quickly to let her know that I was asking her to bark. She thought this was great fun and was killing the pillow and pushing me around all over the place. She really is a very physical dog and has no qualms about using her physicality against me ;-)
Let them both run around some more while I put things away and we were done for the day. All came home to a nice RMB for dinner :-) Happy dogs!
Tor about got his wish to wear an e-collar or bark collar after dinner. He wanted out of his crate and carried on in his worst, most annoying squeaky puppy dog voice. I was about ready to kill him. He's lucky that I am determined not to approach him when he starts complaining or I would have strapped a collar on him and started that lesson on "Quiet" means "Quiet". Fortunately, he did finally shut up.
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