I know that my non-agility friends don’t
get it. I’m quite convinced they are quite convinced that I’m a total
stage mom. Those of you with performance dogs (not pets) understand the
distinction. We know and love our dogs in ways others likely do not
understand. That said, don’t you ever look at your furry star and
think, “Man! She ought to be in pictures …”?
Thanks to the media demands of blogging, however, I will have to be
satisfied with the images I post here. For the record, I’m happy to say
that shooting photos for the blog seems have gotten Lilly over her fear
of the camera. She no longer automatically slinks off or stops what
she’s doing when I point the camera at her. She still will act shy,
sometimes. But, it’s no longer a given.
Victory!
We threw out a bunch of sunflowers in the upper pasture in the spring.
The results weren’t quite the full field we’d hoped for, but a few
rather large flowers did come up along the driveway.
It took me a while, but I finally found an inflatable ball
for Lilly at an outdoor clothing store. I’m using it to teach her to
play volleyball with her nose. My goal is to be able to play extended
volleys over our split-rail fence, but so far, we can only do 4-5 at a
time, with me catching the ball between Lilly’s errant shots. I toss
the ball toward her head and say “Pop,” which is her cue to poke it
into the air with her nose. Sometimes she even jumps up to do it.
I’m also trying to teach her to catch a cloth
frisbee. Because I tried to teach the two tricks too close together,
however, she often just hits the frisbee with her nose, rather than
catching it.
I’m thinking about sending this photo to the Life is Good people. Maybe they’ll decide to use Lilly in their advertising. (ha ha)
Either way, I hope that even when your own training doesn’t go as well
as you hope you can remember that indeed Life is Good … when you
share each day with a dog.
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