Our trainer had said he thought maybe we didn’t have enough toys laying around the house. She is very good at destroying toys so many of her things are kept on the mantle for supervised play times. She destroyed a few of her first toys. So yesterday on my lunch break I went shopping. I think I may have found the ultimate doggy toy for Mississippi.
Behold the Tug-a-Jug
The Tug-a-Jug is a plastic jug with a rubber top and spout. The spout is thin enough that if you pull it part way out and tilt the jug, you can get treats out of the jar. It’s pretty tricky but not so hard that it’s too frustrating. Mississippi loves it. She actually let us sit and relax last night while she futzed with it. Even after she’d emptied it of treats, she still wanted to play with it. It is made from the same stuff they make bullet proof plastic windows out of. The rubber parts seem very tough to chew through.
I also got her some chuck it balls. Tim brought them out at the last class and she seemed to love them. She brought one to bed with her last night. I have been bouncing them on the ground and she is trying to teach herself to time the bounce right so she can catch them in her mouth. It’s a pretty funny site right now.
I picked up a chuck it glow hoping it’ll come in handy when we take her in the back yard at night. She tried to pick up two of these balls at the same time. She is a toy hoarder. Right now it is MIA so I’m not sure the glow part is going to help us much. Guess I have to look for it in the dark. Something tells me it is deep underneath the entertainment center.
I got her an aqua bone but it was really hard to open. I finally got it opened last night and the inside is all yucky and oily. So I’m cleaning it out right now. I’m going to try filling it with water and freezing it because she loves ice cubes. I wish it didn’t smell so chemically. If she doesn’t like it, I’ll have to try boiling it in chicken broth like Tim suggests.
Unsupervised with all that Dirt to Dig Up
I let Mississippi run around the backyard virtually unsupervised today for the very first time. She likes to pull out the landscaping cloth, dig holes, eat my irises, and lately she’s been trying to pull down the training string for my beans. So I can’t just let her run around in the backyard alone for fear of totally destruction of all things dear to me. She sometimes pulls up weeds, which I think is really cool and she likes to prune the bushes. She loves her soccer ball and tug rope so I try to keep her focused out there, but left to her own devices, she’d be halfway to china in 30 seconds flat. Today she just seems to mostly be sniffing around. When my foot was really bad, I learned that using a can of wet food to lure her back in saved me from having to chase her down to bring her back inside. Now all I have to do is say “you want some can?” and she comes rushing back in. Her ability to understand human language when it involves food sometimes astounds me.
Walking on Sunshine
Last weekend we went to a leash walking class. We used the same click training techniques to get her to follow our lead. We do a series of turns and if she follows us, she gets a click and a treat. If there’s any tug on the leash when we turn, she gets a “good girl” for correcting herself, but no treat unless there’s no tug. I have to admit, since I hurt my foot, I’ve been avoiding taking her on walks. I’ve had enough negative experiences with her that having a break from the chaos of walking was such a delight. Yesterday I finally braved the outside world again and took her for a walk, just me and her. She was very excited at first so I took her in the backyard to warm her up. She soon caught on that we were doing our walking training and she stepped right up to the challenge. We stayed on our street but went several blocks. Whenever she’d stop paying attention to me, I’d do a couple turns and she caught on quickly that it was time to pay attention. I was gentle and loving to her and I let her sniff some of her favorite spots as long as she didn’t try to pull me around. It was actually fun to walk her! I can’t believe I just said that. So I figure, a couple more weeks of leash training and hopefully she’ll be much more behaved on walks. We’d tried similar techniques before but the vital element we were missing was a quiet environment for her to learn the skill. We were trying to introduce her to a new skill in the middle of all that fun. It didn’t work. Now I know that if she’s starting out in her wacky phase, we just need a few minutes warm up in the back yard first.
Bark bark bark bark bark bark
I tried to work form the kitchen table this morning. I have a lot of work stuff to do right now and I felt bad that I left her all alone yesterday while I hid out in the basement. Mistake! As long as I’m in her sites but not playing with her, she barks. Bark bark bark. No kong or toy will stop it. It’s windy today and I think she might be barking at the wind. I tried to turn it into a training session for her to learn to go to her place (her crate) but it was just frustrating me. So I’m back in the basement for a while. She barks much less when I’m down here. Hopefully I can take her for a nice walk at lunch time. I’ll practice some down stays with her this afternoon and she if I can get any work done while she practices being patient.
Agile Development
Mississippi loves agility training stuff. I built her a little jump in the back yard and she is getting great at jumping over and crawling under it. I still need to make some hoops for her to jump through. Tim has these great tunnels that you can get at Ikea for cheap. We need some of those. She was running through them in no time the other day in class. She’s been afraid of her plastic kiddy pool so I got her to go in that the other day too. That will be lots of fun once it starts getting hot. She’s got that shiny black coat so some water time will feel great on a sunny day. Richard told me about Columbia Agility Training. We may give that a whirl later on.
Crazy eye
Last night when Tom got home, Mississippi was just nuts with joy. She gets these huge grins on her face and her tongue sticks out the side of her mouth. It is completely hilarious looking and although she was jumping all over Tom, he couldn’t stop laughing long enough to correct her. She got away with a lot of jumping last night.