Strangely, I think I've been getting telepathic messages from them, because I was looking at lambies online yesterday and a couple fell into my shopping basket. Rise of the Lambies.
Where do you get them from? Ella has been deprived of a lambie as I've been unable to find any! Please don't report me to the RSPCA!
Hehe, our first Lambie, Tupper, came from a faraway land called Kong. If you search for "Tupper the Lamb", you'll find many pictures of him
Well, back to the original topic (I know, how dull!), I've just got back from an hour walking in a blizzard. Still managed to incorporate a bit of light training, basic cues and trying to get them to look at me (uncued) when I'm holding a cone at arm's length. Willow got this quickly, Shadow - well, I had a tired arm by the time he took his eyes off the cone Anyhow, I digress. My point was we'd had a good walk, the dogs had followed lots of cues and done lots of running around, finishing with a longish walk to heel on-lead. When we got home, they went nutty. Bouncing off the walls. Literally. Actually literally, not "I like the sound of the word, so I'm going to use it, even if I don't know what it really means" literally. They were so wound up, bum-tucking everywhere and crashing into things, I thought they were going to hurt themselves, but my "enough" wasn't working. So I tried "sit" instead. They sat!! I released them and they immediately went nutty again. So I asked for a sit again.... and they did it. Again, I released them, and again, chaos. When they were sitting, you could see how much they were enjoying the anticipation of what was to come - they were shaking with excitement. It was pretty good fun In the end I used the magic word after a sit ("TREATS!") and gave them a cow ear each to keep them occupied for five minutes and help them calm down. They're now snoozing peacefully. There's no question that they were highly excited this time, so I guess that means my "sit" cue is getting pretty well proofed
Hee hee - sounds like really good fun! On the cone thing, I had this with Charlie and a dummy - well, I still have it, of course, but I'm making progress. At training SWMBO had me wait and wait and wait for Charlie to look away - hell froze over, SWMBO nipped away to make the tea in the warm...(I'm exaggerating). Anyway, I thought about this as a strategy and changed it. I went out and bought the best ball ever and a second to best one (large, rubber, hollow, handles - I know Charlie's weakness ). I got Charlie to sit with his back to someone holding a dummy, he was twisting his head round like an owl to see the dummy , made his attention noise, the microsecond he took his eye of the dummy I threw his second to best ball behind me, away from the dummy. If my attention noise hadn't worked, I'd have got the second best ball out of my bag and banged it, quite close to him - whatever I had to do to draw his attention to a fantastic reward that was not the dummy. 72 victory laps later, he gave me the second best ball back and we could repeat...3 sessions later and he has no trouble sitting with his back to a dummy. He can now even fetch the dummy on a back cue and give it to me before the second best ball reward. Rinse, repeat - the fantastic reward comes from away from the dummy/pine cone. Just thinking of a use for the first best ball....might save it and hope it beats pheasant pelt - fat chance!
Yes, I need to get a helper! I have a few things lined up for when J can come on walks with us at some point. If there was no such thing as work getting in the way, I'd have the best trained dogs on the planet. That may be a slight exaggeration.
