A Taste of Freedom: Part 3

Our last full day here, and we finally got perfect weather. It was sunny, low 80's, and with a light breeze keeping the bugs away. Just right for swimming and relaxing on the dock. The pups swam for the fetch toy until they were tired. Maxwell told us he was done when he ditched the toy on the rocks, then went to perch on his favorite boulder. Sadie gave one final chase, than took the toy up into the woods, away from the humans.

 Super Sadie!

Yeah, I'm good over here thanks.

After the humans were done swimming, it was time for lunch. We finished the bag of potato chips while the hot dogs were on the grill, so the pups got the crumbs. Sadie, of course, just jammed her head in the bag. Maxwell was a bit daintier, and preferred to have the crumbs dumped on the floor for him.

 Kids, don't try this at home

After lunch and some relaxing time, it was back to the dock. Since I finally had some really good natural light, we started posing the dogs and trying to get some nice photos. It was hard to get them to actually pose together. Since Sadie is definitely still higher ranking, Maxwell kept leaning away from her. Both were avoiding looking at each other, with occasional nose licking and yawning. It actually made for some really interesting behavior watching.

 Leaning tower of Maxwell

Noble beasts survey their domain

That night I got to polish up some new tricks. Both pups had been earning their dinners, and especially all the extra goodies. Each dog has one new behavior that is at least 75% "complete."

For Sadie, I picked something that seemed natural: begging. In the space of about 5 days, she learned a nearly-complete cue. When I hold out my index finger horizontally across my body, she rocks back on her haunches, gets her front feet up in the air, and holds the pose for a few seconds. It doesn't count if her butt comes off the floor, if her front paws go over her head, or if she cannot freeze the pose. It's really cute, and absolutely the fastest trick she's ever learned. In fact, I think learning to beg was the first time I've seen a real conditioned emotional response (CER) with her. In the past she's certainly looked happy at the sounds of the click, but generally in the form of switching her attention to the treat bowl. This time, I saw a huge twitch reaction and head tilt at the click, and her attention stayed on me. It was awesome.

I had planned to teach Maxwell to march with me. My goal was to have him raise his front paws to correspond to my lifted feet. For example, with him at heel, I lift and hold my right foot. He lifts and holds his right paw. He took to paw targeting my foot, which was a start, but meant that he'd swing his right paw across his body to swipe at my right foot. To fix this, I decided to stand a flashlight on end and teach him to paw target that instead, eliminating the sideways motion. When I put the flashlight down, though, he bit the handle! I simple couldn't pass up such an interesting offered behavior, so I clicked. He very quickly progressed to running about 5 feet down the hallway, grabbing the flashlight by the handle, and carrying it back to me. All on offered behaviors. It's not perfect yet - he drops it rather hard, and doesn't always grab the handle properly - but it's a pretty neat trick. No cue for it yet. That will have to wait for our next visit.

The last day there was also gorgeous. We exhausted the dogs in the lake, giving them plenty of time to run around on land and dry off before the ride home. Now they still seem to be adjusting to leashes, and certainly miss all the freedom they had in the woods. Hopefully we'll get back there again soon!

The end of a perfect day on a perfect trip