So the weather has been somewhat confusing this year. We had about a week of warm, spring-like temperatures and then this week it's been back to cold rain and winter coats. While I'm usually ok with most types of weather, I'm not a huge fan of constant rain (mostly b/c of the mud and the muddy leonberger - the exercise deprived, lets stay outside in the rain, mud covered leonberger. For proof see Exhibit A.)
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| Exhibit A: Mokey enjoying a spring shower. |
Even if the weather can't make up it's mind we have had a few nicer days. Days that have allowed us to take our walks and stare at people in their driveways and once again assume our position as local stalker in the neighborhood. Mokey's finally learning the fine art of stalking in silence and not giving away our position by loud barking and lunge fits. In all seriousness, she is slowly getting better - we're crawling along really. But progress is progress. When Mo isn't sleeping or training or pestering the family for attention, she's usually outside dragging around her water hose - hoping desperately someone will come hook it up and play that silly game with her. She's obsessed. I mean 100%, crazily, happily obsessed with it. In the summer I used to just leave the hose hooked up to the house. When Mokey started pulling on it to get the excess water to squirt out - I had to start unhooking it for fear that she'd yank the water spout off.
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| Mokey pulling her hose around the yard. |
Mokey has been practicing her nose works as well. She's doing really well at it so far but unfortunately we're stalled for the time being. Normally at this point you would begin training with a scent - pairing the food and scent. However because Mo's still so fearful - of people and strange noises and objects - we're unable to move onto scents right away. This is because we want to avoid a situation where Mokey could become scared/startled by something during the search. If she became scared enough, she may associate the scent with the scary thing and then begin to avoid that scent. So, in order to be extra careful, I decided just to leave her on finding treats for now while we work on searching in new areas and around unfamiliar items. Of course I'll never be able to bomb proof her - there's always a chance that something, somewhere will scare her. But right now, since she's still learning and since so many things still make her nervous, we're just going to play it safe and wait. Whether we're on scent or not, it's still fun to do.
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| Mokey searches. |
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| Mokey finds it! Yay! |
