Daniel At Play

Daniel gets a lot of free time to just be a dog. Sniffing is what he loves to do. Always nose to the ground when he is outside.

Who Is Training Who?

Recently Daniel had a play mate for a few days. This picture is of Dan and his friend Rocky. They had just finished playing and decided it was time for a nap.


Daniel continues to be a great joy in our life and also a force to be reckoned with. Daniel has hit the infamous six month stage of his life. I knew it was coming and was just waiting for it.

I no longer have to wait.


Now I will explain. At between six and seven months it seems that even the best dog in the world will turn into a bit of a patience tester. The best way I can explain this is don't take your eyes of him for more than a minute or two and by all means if you can't hear him you better go check and see what he is doing NOW!!!


It can be anything from ripping up dog beds, destroying tennis balls, taking clothes off the line piece by piece to taking my shoes out of the shoe bag into his kennel and destroying them in a matter of minutes. ( Good thing Kohls has a sale on this week ).


Funny thing is when they are in this stage of their life's they show no sign of remorse about anything they do. When I caught him with my shoe that he had watched me put in the shoe bag 15 minutes before I asked him to bring it to me in a very stern voice, he looked up as if to say okay this one is done could I have the other one now please. Labs are amazing. I am sure the Good Lord put them on this earth so we would not forget how to laugh long and hard.


Now on to the great stuff he is learning. I had stopped doing any skills training with Dan because it was all going to fast and I was worried that maybe he would be getting confused at his young age with all the things he was learning. I decided to just focus on basic obedience skills.


Dan is a forger. Meaning he wants to walk two steps in front of you not beside you. Especially now in this stage if you give him a foot he will take a yard. So we have been working in the schools where I can walk him right up next to a wall on my left side for the heel command or on my right for the side command. If he does not have anything to sniff at like on a walk outside he is coming along great on a leash. Okay back to skills. Yesterday I took him to work with me and decided to work on shutting the door, in this case pulling it shut. I tied a soft piece of fleece to the door handle and asked him to take it and tug. After a second of trying to figure out why I was not at the other end of the cloth he decided to do it. He took the cloth pulled hard and shut the door. Yeah! I acted like a crazy woman and praised him up and down and loved him up.


So I asked him to do it again. This time he looked at me, turned around got his ball and said I did it once now time to play, so we did. At my office Daniel is passed around from person to person so it is not uncommon for a co-worker to take Dan and try a lesson or two. He had been on a errand with a co-worker and she decided to try and get him to shut the door. She used the same language I did, asked him to tug and poof the door was shut. She asked him to do it again and he went to his drawer got his ball and said time to play. So she did! Who is training who?


One more thing about Daniel. We forgot to tell him he is not a lap dog. There is nothing he enjoys more than climbing up in your lap and taking a nap. For a dog that is close to 50#s you would think this would not be comfortable. To Daniel it the next best thing to chewing up my tennis shoe.