Saturday, December 3, 2011

Volunteering and a Violet Video (how often can you use an alliteration with Vs?)

I haven't been updating for a few days because I have a heck of a winter cold. The short updates are these: Violet "gave paw" to my eye a day or two ago while I was laying on the bed with her, so I got a scratched, puffy eye for a while - she's lucky I love her. Ouch. I've started volunteering at the daycare that Mary used to run, and I'm pretty excited about that. I'm through the orientation process and start actually doing stuff on Tuesday. Today is my first assignment with Tri-State Collie Rescue. I'm very excited about that, even though it's actually a (large) Sheltie. We'll be transporting Cena, who's been pretty badly abused, to Seymour, IN, where he'll meet another volunteer for the next leg of his journey. We've got a big wire crate in the backseat, full of soft blankets and a peanut butter Kong. That's in a few hours, and I'll be blowing my nose all the way to Seymour.


In other news, here's a video of Violet's second day working on "Stay." Sorry about the low-quality and sick-voice, haha.


2 comments:

  1. She's doing really well! Funny, when she started to break away as you approached that time I said "Uh!" the same time that you did lol I have only seen dogs being trained a couple times and I'm embarrassed to admit there was one command "touch" I've either forgotten or never heard of. What is that used for, just to calm them or...?

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  2. Touch is used sometimes in rally or agility sports, you can use it as the base for a lot of different things. For me, it's just I hold my hand out and say "Touch," she touches my hand with her nose. It was one of the first things I taught her as kind of a learning to learn thing. At first when you're training a puppy they don't really know that you're asking them to DO something, so you teach something very easy so they get what training is. Hold out one hand with a treat in the other and say "Touch" - eventually they'll get frustrated wanting the treat and nudge your other hand - big praise and rewards. It's easy, so then when they see you with a handful of treats and you run them through a few commands, then give them one they don't know and one way or another encourage them to do what you want, they get that you're asking them to figure something out and learn something new. Now I just do it with her so she doesn't forget what it means in case I want to build on it later for agility or something. :) You ask the most thoughtful questions, Lorelei, and I'm sorry if that was wordy and incoherent, I am sick as heck and my brain is foggy.

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