Toward the end of our behavior consult last Saturday, a storm with plenty of lightening and thunder rolled across the mountains. I’ve never had to help Lilly cope with a storm away from home. I guess I should have planned better, but here is how we got through it. …
I managed to crank out a LOT of work earlier this week, which means everything sat on others’ desks come Wednesday. I do have a few revisions and new things pending, but I’m waiting on input from clients and sources. Wednesday was the first real sort-of-summer-like day we’ve had in a while, so Lilly and I loaded up and went to class. Here’s how it went. …
Thanks to my dog friends on Twitter, I learn about some interesting dog news. Here is a round up of things I thought you might enjoy, including when dogs look guilty, shock collar warnings, a good background piece on how dogs learn, and a dog who knows lots of tricks. …
My deadline-soaked and worry-filled pace continues, but two days last week I felt less like my head would explode. Decent weather meant I could write outside, so I ran up and grabbed Katie (Lilly’s best, best friend — the borzoi) to visit. I got a remarkable amount done those days, despite having three goofball dogs racing around all … day … long. …
Playing fetch with your dog is a good idea for a bunch of reasons. It burns off lots of monkey energy. It lets dogs exercise the chase part of prey drive. In Lilly’s case, it also lets her exercise the gathering instinct since border collies are a herd fetching breed more than they are a driving breed, like our Australian shepherd pal Pitsch. But, maybe the best part of playing fetch is that you can practice three training cues in the process. …
On Friday, Mary over at Cowgirl by Proxy wondered about the dog training classes we take. I wrote a long, detailed response in the comments, which promptly got eaten by my blog software. I’ll do my best to recreate those thoughts here. For several years now, we have trained exclusively with Gigi Moss in Boulder, CO, who is the ONLY dog trainer who did not give up on us because of Lilly’s fears. We are very loyal clients and would be completely lost without her support, wisdom, and patience. …
We finally made it to class on Sunday. We hadn’t been since the middle of March, and it showed. Lilly was relatively shut down at times. Gigi (our trainer) thought Lilly did well, considering it’d been so long and that there were so many new dogs. …
All winter we had virtually no snow. Then, came spring, and it would not stop snowing. Now that it’s essentially summer, we’re getting rain most days. It’s the greenest it’s been around here maybe ever. So, here are a few shots I thought you might enjoy. (P.S. We had a big bear run through our back pasture, mere feet from our back door last night, but my camera is s-l-o-w to turn on, and I missed getting a shot of it before it ran off. Very cool, though. I’ve never seen a bear before.) …
Sometimes I feel l like the more I read the more confused I get about training a fearful dog and what can go wrong if you reward the wrong things. Essentially, I believe you cannot make a real fear worse by comforting a fearful dog. Despite what the tough-love people want us to believe, my understanding is that using classical conditioning makes fears better, not worse. Yet, I read some things in Dr. Nicholas Dodman’s book The Well-Adjusted Dog that have me doubting myself again. Help!?! …
Remember me mentioning that I got to interview Temple Grandin, Nicholas Dodman, and Jean Donaldson for a magazine article a while back? Well, the story is through editing and is set to run in July. (I promise, I’ll be able to tell you soon what it’s about.) The editors had one photo of me and Lilly, but they wanted one of me with both dogs in a more spring-like setting for the magazine contributors’ page. The old photo was taken in winter. So, one day last week, I actually did my hair and put …
