After another exciting day, we stayed home again to practice chilling rather than being an athlete or adrenaline junkie! Chai got brushed all over and the nails on all four nails clipped (she’s such a good girl about this – I simply announce it and do it and Chai lets me). We also started charging her formal recall cue: “Schnee.”
Play and chill at home with Game.
Charging “Schnee” (this video may be from one of the subsequent days rather than from day 13 – we first started in the house):
Staying home also always means, of course, that we practice quite a lot of home-alone time: after all, Game gets her long walks even when Chai doesn’t.
Chaiary, day 14: Parque las Américas with Game, long line pressure practice, lots of play with Game and meeting and getting fed by 11 strangers!
Day 14 was on the more exciting side again: lots of confident dog encounters!
One thing I love about Mexico City is that it is so easy to encounter dogs of all sizes, shapes, ages and morphologies. From pugs to Great Danes to everything in between – you name it, we’ll meet it!
I beat my own record and roped charmed 11 strangers into allowing Chai to voluntarily approach and then feed her. AND she got to assist me for my first online class videos: giving in to leash pressure and long line handling!
As I mentioned in a previous post – I would not usually feed the behavior of hitting the end of a leash and then reorienting because smart dogs will learn to hit the end on purpose in order to earn a treat. I’m only doing this with Chai when out with Game every once in a while these days because I want this leash pressure response for her formal recall distraction set-ups (which we will get to in a bit). So here is the piece I do not recommend you replicate with your own dog:
On the other hand, what you see below is something I do recommend: these are my two favorite long-line handling ways that avoid rope burn or squished fingers/broken hands with strong dogs who might crash into the end of a long line. There are more methods out there and if you’ve already found what works for you and your dog – no need to change what you’re doing! On the other hand, if your hands keep getting injured by your dog – try the leash handling techniques from the video below! One of them may be the winner for you!
If you need more support to figure out your long line challenges, join us in Out and About! Gold spots are full, but you’ll get to work with a fantastic TA in the FB study group at Bronze!