Tuesday, August 2, 2011

broken and fixed?

So we(Moose and I) decided that a little work out in the heat was in order.

Then we decided, no, we could work inside. Much better idea and less sweat involved.

Alec in one of his boredom induced dog training moments(those are always the worst) taught a certain oversized brindle dog how to play dead. Let me remind you that in another boredom induced training session, he taught his collie how to shake hands, even how to alternate which one he asked for. He's sort of, or should I say that I sort of regret that as she offers that behavior when she's in a pissy mood now. Add in a snark along with the deadly paw and well, it's annoying.

Moose has always had a great down. It's typically flat on his back, feet waving at the ceiling and yes he holds it for 3 mins in novice and a whole 5 mins in open. But add in the pointed finger and a bang, it's even more dramatic. So last night....

We start working on his "around"-swing to the left. He defaults to the "heel" swing to the right and I'm working on getting him to wait for the correct command and not anticipate. Part of this is also working on his left pivot so we can work on RA and RE signs. Moose has no clue where his rear is, my fault in not training pivots on the rear early on. But with a suggestion from a training friend, he's sort of found it again. His left pivots are starting to come together and we use that a lot when working on other things as he loves left pivots and it keeps him up in the ring.

His "around" was hilarious as he was bouncing to the left and then swinging to his butt back to the front-I'm so not sure what he was thinking but I gave in and shot him dead. Mistake. Because next we worked on sit-stand-down-sit. Sit-got it. Stand-he cocked an ear, swiveled an eye and went "seriously?" and feigned a mock stand. Down-oh shit. Yeap, he went down for the count, even putting his paws over his nose in an awesome over the top play dead routine. Do you think I could regain control of the situation and get him back to a sit? Not on your life, he was dead and that's where he was staying.

Of course the collie just looked at him like he was an idiot, came up and said, dude, if you seriously want to quit, just give her the paw---which is what the EBD did.

Later gators...
C

4 comments:

Dawn said...

I love smart dogs. It makes training more challenging, but so much more fun.

Ashley said...

ha! I would like to get Reese to do that!

Greg K said...

Oh I love it. He knew he was supposed to be dead!

Kathy and Kim Gibson said...

Hilarious!