No Wonder Daddy is So Tired!

Well, sometimes I just can’t think of anything to work on with a dog and we just pretty much play. I was worn out and didn’t have the energy and bandwidth to really focus on improving anything with Coyote today and here is the result.

Coyote was thrilled, but then he’s thrilled anytime he gets attention (and a Frisbee)! Enjoy this exuberant display of rapid fire behaviors! I chose to play, “The Man on the Flying Trapeze” for Coyote because, well, he always gets the girls.

And he isn’t even the cutest dog I have. That would be Squirrel, but Squirrel is just too bossy and therefor annoying.  She is always like “Hey! Get over here!” Coyote is more like, “Hey-wouldn’t it be a LOT of fun if you took this ball out of my mouth and threw it for me?”  (over and over again) Well, people wind up being so impressed with Coyotes antics not to mention feeling that he deserves a good massage for working so hard that it’s no time at all before he’s getting all the pets and attention. There’s some great dating advice, guys. Work on some self-improvement and you’ll be more appealing.

You really learn a lot from dogs when you really pay attention. There’s some kind of saying that gets the idea that everything in the universe is contained in every mote that you care to look at closely enough. Like, if you’re stuck outside of New York, don’t worry you can still get all the artistic enjoyment of that metropolis of cutting edge and historical art by watching a sunset.  Pflugerville is obviously exempt from this consideration, but I digress.

When you watch this video you will see what it is about dogs, and life, that I love. Exuberence, athleticism, striving for achievement, happiness, focused attention. Heck, the list would just go on and on. I don’t want to try to describe the world’s most beautiful display of perfection when you can just click the link and see it for yourself. And remember, this is just like one minute of a training session and not all that special of one anyway. I was asking him for more behaviors than I normally do for a treat, but then these are the things he knows really well. What we are talking about is working on chains of behavior and that brings us to the crux of dog training.

I came to this session not having the energy to really train, but needed to do something with Coyote. So I started and didn’t have anything in mind, a real mistake most trainers will tell you. But here’s the thing. I started playing with him and didn’t have a goal in mind except to have some fun and get him a little directed attention and exercise. Only while watching this video and writing about it do I realize that we made some really good progress on getting Coyote to do a chain of behaviors in order to get a treat. I was like, “The camera is on and I’ll just try to get several things to show how well Coyote knows these things.”

Anyway-just get out there and play with your dog. Even if you have a plan the dog isn’t going to know what it is and if he has fun with you now, it’ll build up some assets in his emotional bank account that you can draw on when he gets frustrated or distracted. The idea is that because you’re normally so much fun, that even if there’s another dog to bark at, if you ask for his attention he knows that he can benefit by giving it to you.

I want to emphasize that by following my training advise-well, you get the kind of behavior in this video…..maybe I shouldn’t say that if I want to make a living training dogs.