Three Dane Household

For the past couple of weeks we've been working hard and playing harder! Our friend Huey was staying with us for a week. Roxy and Lilly are quite besotted with him. Easy to see why, he's a handsome guy!

Huey is very gregarious and a good influence on Roxy who tends to be fear aggressive in new situations. We did a lot of walking around town and had a good amount of play time on the grounds of El Morro and San Cristobal. Whenever people wanted to meet the dogs, which is all the time, I let them say "Hi" to Huey first and then Roxy could see that there was nothing to fear and she warmed right up to the new person. Thanks Huey!

Not being wary of new things enables Roxy to pay more attention to me instead of worrying about what some person or another dog is going to do. Today we had a major breakthrough in this department. As we were running through the park another dog about 50 feet away started barking like crazy at us. Roxy looked, I said her name and she looked back at me straight away!!! Hallelujah! I gave her one a piece of hot dog(big favorite) and we ran on with me telling her how good she was and acting really silly. She loves the silliness so she keeps looking at me to see what I'll do next. I'm sure we look crazy but who cares.

Recently I've started to think about getting ready for a 10K run/walk which is in February. I walked last year but I want to improve my time so I've slowly started running more. What the point of doing it if you're not going to do better, right?! The dogs love this. I guess it's just more interesting plus I make all sorts of changes of directions and circles so they have to pay attention. I play a heeling game which is fun. Every so often I drop a treat on the ground. The dog goes for the treat and looks for more. Since they know I have the treats they come back to me. When they get to heel position, or at least near, I give another treat. This shows them it's OK to look around but they have to check in with me, so to speak. Easy and fun.

This weekend we have another show. It's the last show of the season. Things may go differently as this is an outdoor show. Hopefully that means all the people and dogs will not be quite so close to the ring which is extremely distracting. We have checked out the show site and are as ready as we can be. A couple more days to practice and a little praying to the Attention Gods will wrap up the week.

Until then....Train, don't complain!