Well, updates and training may be a bit sparse for a couple of days. My brother is moving out of this house into his own after quite a few years of living with me. My husband joined us in this house a little over a year ago, and as of tomorrow it will just be us two. That will be both nice, and a little weird. I've got used to having the brother around!
Knightley knows there is something serious up, there has been a lot of commotion recently... especially today getting ready for the movers tomorrow morning. I am planning to leave him in his fabric crate in my room (will soon have a much bigger room!) with Through A Dog's Ear on the stereo to help keep him calm and drown out some of the noise of the people who will be in and out of the house. For those of you who don't know Through A Dog's Ear, it's classical music for piano that has been specially arranged to keep dogs calm and relaxed and works very well. I'll just keep it on loop and that should at least help a bit.
I'll be helping with the move, and then I'll be off to my volunteer job... so it's going to be a long day. I'm already feeling rather tired out and quite migrainous. Cross fingers for me all the commotion doesn't bring on a migraine.
Knightley and I didn't get much time to train today, but we did do some loose leash practice, which is still badly needed, sigh..... I put a small pile of treats and kibble on the road outside our house (we live on a very quiet street) and practice walking Knightley back and forward past it without having him pull. I had to do a LOT of c/ting to have a chance of keeping the leash loose. He didn't do too bad. After slowly slowly coming closer to it with a loose leash, I gave Knightley his cue to go ahead and eat the food. It's a good way to teach loose leash, but he kept on getting distracted by what was going on around him - a person in the distance, a bird, a motorbike etc.
We also did some relax, trying to get closer to the 1 minute relax, 1 minute excited, 1min relax, 1 min excited and so on that Knightley and I need to get in the bag for Level 2 Relax to be finished. He was pretty hyped up with all the furniture and box moving though, so we couldn't even get to 20 seconds, which was his previous baseline. I put some good time in working on it though... pushing him to relax when he truly is excited is good practice.
There were quite a few recalls - until he was becoming disruptive and trying to 'help' a little too much, and had to be crated, much to his very evident and audible disappointment, lol.....
That was about it for today for structured training, although I always do random bits during the day, throwing in sudden downs, always requiring sits for virtually anything he wants (I subscribe to the Nothing In Life Is Free school of thought, where anything he wants comes at a price in that he has to do something for me first before he gets it).
So updates we likely be short and to the point, not only do I have some moving to help with, we have a lot of house reorganising of our own to do because of this, as my brother is taking a good chunk of the furniture with him. We are taking advantage of the fact and will be switching things around a bit - and getting a big bedroom with ... wait for it.. STORAGE SPACE! Anyway, this is me going to much needed sleep. Catch ya later.
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