Dart Beagle & Dinner Time
Dart Beagle is learning to make choices.
He is especially learning to make choices about default behavior, and how ultimately it behooves him to hang around me and focus on me and…
Well, everything that might be the opposite of splurting away from me at Warp 10 to run circles around not just an agility course, but the entire agility venue.
(But we won't talk about that.)
In general, we're working a lot of pre-mack stuff. Or modified pre-mack, probably. What that means is that if Dart chooses to perform the desired behavior, he GETS WHAT HE WANTS.
Over the past week, this has slowly been seeping into his "this is your brain on black ice" thought process:
Heel past the OMG TOYS, receive instant permission to run over and stuff as many as possible into your mouth.
Do a recall past the OMG TOYS, receive instant permission to run over and grab one for a game of tug.
Maintain a sit-stay with an OMG TOY being casually tossed past, receive instant permission to GO GET IT and prance around making doggy mooing sounds of pride.
When I say "instant," I mean instant. I don't think Dart actually has Warp 10. I think Dart translocates.
Of course, if he chooses wrong, then the toys…oh woe…go away.
His most recent and hardest EVER lesson comes at dinner time. At this time of the day, Dart comes into the house vibrating so hard with excitement that he's barely visible at all. Sort of like an atom. And recently, I've upped the ante on what I expect from him at this time:
In order for permission to enter the crate and eat, he has to come to me past the crate.
Past.
The.
Crate.
Well, we're in the beginning stages of that, and that means…Flying Dart.
Normally I don't allow him to jump from the crate. Too much accumulated impact. But we'll work on that again later. Right now, we're in step one of this process, which means he invites himself into the crate, comes flying out of it to me, pops a wheelie, and returns to the crate. All far too fast for the camera, apparently…
This was Leap #3.
His job? To learn that when he comes to me, he sits and waits. Ultimately, bypassing the crate. At the moment, we're on four rounds of FLY WHEELIE RETURN before we get SIT WAIT RELEASE CRATE FOODFOODFOOD!!
We'll work on step two after we get this one.
I figure it could be a while.
FOODFOODFOOD
