It's quite a hot day today, so this morning I chose a walk that is largely on wooded, shady footpaths with the odd muddy spring, then opens out at the end to a large flat glade with a waterfall and stream. This area is prime marmot territory and after a few minutes of splashing in the stream, sure enough we heard the call of one of the little monsters. Shadow dashed off, making a bee-line for the noise, with Willow in hot pursuit. I fumbled over my whistle and, by the time I got it to blow, they were a good 50+ metres away. I blew my stop whistle. They stopped and turned! Woohoo! OK, they didn't sit, but they stopped and turned!!!!!! Then, I blew my recall and they came absolutely hurtling back towards me at full pelt. Yey!!!!! I've been using very high value treats on recall recently - either a dehydrated prawn head or a dried piece of tripe to start, then three or four pieces of turkey or cheese, thrown to them to catch, followed by half a mini breadstick each, thrown to chase and find. It's obviously working. So happy with this achievement and proud of the two of them. We won't mention the dead mole that Willow found and rolled on over and over again. She very, very rarely rolls, so this must have been good! To be frank, I'm amazed she didn't eat it. She was surrounded by flies for the remainder of the walk, though. Disgusting creatures, these Labradors...
Woohooo!!!! Your training is really coming along in leaps bounds...it sounds like you are getting to grips with that really quick response to the whistle...kinda envious really...
Well, I'm not kidding myself that they'd do it in other situations. Like, if they'd actually seen the marmot...
Oh, I forgot to mention, Willow was wading around in the deeper water and Shadow was just splashing around in the shallows. I really wanted him to get his undercarriage in - firstly to clean the mud off, but also to cool down a bit. So I gave him the cue to lie down, and he did! I can imagine Willow's face had I asked her to do the same thing
Go you, that's brilliant and well done Willow and Shadow. It just shows you what high value treats can achieve. Last week Mabel came back on my recall command from 3 dogs when she was in play mode. It was worth me carrying fish skins in my pocket and smelling revolting.
