Tricky T-day!

Time for an update on my barkings! Mum has been putting ‘the plan’ into action over this last week and listening to tips given here. Today I managed to go out the door without even one barking and with Auntie Penny there too! Today when Mum put her socks on I did not bark and only did a little bit of digging on the bed!

Note from Mum: Some people said ‘well, you’re a sheltie, of course you are going to bark’. I’m aware that they are barky, but just like we work on nervousness and excitability I’d like to think I can work on barking needlessly. 😉 I think we are making progress. The biggest result seems to come from just ignoring any unwanted behavior, which as I’m sure you know is hard when they are so high-pitched, or you’re in a hurry to leave. I’ve been putting my coat and his harness on and then just sitting around the house, he’s getting good with that, hardly batting an eyelid now. The perfume part he still goes bonkers at though. TNP wondered why I was wearing perfume and makeup at dog training the other day. lol! I’ve also stopped indulging his games. When I pick up his harness he play bows and runs off. It’s not that he dislikes it, it’s that we allowed it to be a fun game, the same I think with the socks, it’s fun for him to dig about on the bed and me to chase him off. He’s like the kid in the playground that likes to pull your hair. I have adopted a policy of if he does not come calmly to get his lead on it gets put back down, or I stand there stubbornly until he gives up. We did have one set back of barking when I left. He settled down fine, But I forgot something and had to come back in. As I was running late by then I rushed around and he had a mini frenzy as I left again. Ok, back to Ludo.

What a blog hog Mum! OK, for other actual tricky stuff at class we has beed doing a ‘tricks’ class and last night be our last night. I had lots of fun and we gonna go back and do agility and hopefully our silver good citizen award too. I like my new school a whole lot! We also did some more flyball stuff. I got better at catching the ball and worked up to having the ball in the machine thingy a couple of times. I practiced hitting it and running back to Mum in a straight line and going over some jumps too. It a big shame though, not enough peoples want to do it with us and there no other clubs anywhere near us so we can’t do anymore in school just yet.

Here a long and boring video of me doing some freestyle tricks. That where the trainer person not tell you what to do and you decide what tricks to do by yourself. They choose which ones to click though. Sorry for the wonkyness, we still getting the hang of our new camera. The total time gone by be 13 minutes. Can you count how many different tricks I can think of all by myself?

We looking after Penny today. We tooked her to the beach and she has beed very good. Mum got some photos for Reilly’s competition but we will save them for next post.

Happy T-day!
~lickies, Ludo