scot is with us... in the guest house with gray== hopefully bonding..gray is a great dog.. but not for everyone. he is soooooo... happy... and 150 pounds of happy dane needs some special handling !! scot left dash home with her "off harness friend"== she is slowing down .. and scot has some wild speaking itteninery with his"knot today" book...
and we have... hopefully a litter started-- sir richard finally figured it all out.. ( or in) with a 10 minute tie. whoever designed canine reproduction had a warped sense of humor...with luck we are back on schedule of a litter every 2 months???
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we have an additional employee--- wants to work into training--- megan sponsored.... so we will work her into teh kennel area until i have a good look at her dog... she has a rescue dane-- i want to see if her dog thinks she has trainer potential-- she has some animal husbsandry degree- but the one that really counts is--- what does her dog think of her ?-- you will see her on camera-- she has done overnights -- i will try and keep her in the arena area often.
that arena could be set up with more things like deloris...our driveway manequin..
deloris is there to get dogs used to people standing still== like in store windows.'
it is critical-- and goes back to wolfdom..
if 2 dogs suddenly come face to face. they often freeze-- at which time the slightest twitych that people can't see will eitehr make them play of fight --- many bad dog fights begin with that frozen stance.-- consequently.... seeing a manequin in a store window is often terrifying to a pup. as is teh 25 cent ride on the merrygo round horse. it is comical to watch a new pup go round to the rear of the horse and have a sniff... then look very bewildered..."boy is he constipated" ...
moving on.. teh arena has stairs, dog statue, ramps grills.. it could use a better back up training "thing" ----- lacking that , to train a dog to back on command, moving the sofa away from the wall does work feed them once behind teh sofa where teh have to back out getws them 12 trained with the leaqst confusion-- and is what you need in airplane travel -- back between the seats and lie down. wierd things and achieving boredom with them are critical to service dog training. trick there is to figure out what the dog sees as wierd.... takes some rethinking.
bently knows we put deloris in the driveway so he can stretch his leg up and pee high on her dress just to prove how big a dog he is..
we once had a cardboard john kerry in the corner of teh training room- when he crumpled, we had the upper part of teh 3 stooges.. but htat was not as effective.cardboard is a poor substitute..mannequins are better .
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wellllllllll we once had the bottom 1/2 of a female mannequin-- which volunteers would dress
and place in strange places...
one day........ Annie fell in teh donkey stall and had trouble getting up-- so we called 911-- i went to open the electric gate to send tehm "down by the flagpole" no t realizing that 1/2 mannequin was there and lying under the tractor-- teh emt's had a very bad moment thinking someone had been run over by teh tractor
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we need some more creativity in teh arena... purposful creativity as opposed to junk.
