Well, we’re back in Level 2, and my puppy is allowed to run off-lead again. He is very pleased about this. He’s still bouncing off the walls but Rik and I hope that he will settle down soon.
There’s a park at the end of my street where dogs are allowed to run off-lead. It’s fairly small but there’s a lot packed into it – a scout hall, netball courts (abandoned since the indoor arena was built), a velodrome/athletics field, a camping ground, a little fenced-off area with captive wallabies, and an aviary where the council keeps an incestuous flock of white pigeons, among other stray or confiscated birds.
This park also houses my town’s attempt at a botanic gardens, which looks nice and colourful at the right time of year. This is not the right time of year, but the botanic gardens also houses one of my regular daily dog training challenges … The Corridor of Doom.
The Corridor of Doom
The Corridor of Doom is a paved path with flower beds on either side of it. But in my imagination it’s a footpath with a road on one side and train tracks on the other. Or a path through a forest rife with gin traps. But most often it’s a ring entrance at the NZ Dog Agility Champs, lined with hordes of children eating ice cream … and I’d be So Embarrassed if Able knocked them all over as we walk up to the line to run in the Senior final. I’m allowed to dream, right? Although I hope my puppy and I will have finally mastered appropriate greeting etiquette by the time he’s a big grown-up Senior dog.
My mission is to walk from one end of the path to the other with my puppy off-lead, and without any plants getting trampled. Every time he sneaks off into the flower beds, we earn a demerit – either a Dropped Ice Cream or an Injured Child depending on the severity. We usually walk around the park counter-clockwise, and The Corridor of Doom is near the end of our walk. For an added challenge we can go around clockwise, and tackle it before he’s had a chance to run and stretch his legs.
This is a little exercise I’ve built into our life to encourage me to work on “off-lead proximity walking”, as I think of it. This is not something that Able is very keen on, but it’s an important life skill. I’m not looking for anything even vaguely like heelwork, just that my dog remains within one body length of me (either forward or backwards) and stays on whichever side of me he happens to be on. I try to mix up which side he and Rik go on, although is hard because they both know “Close” (for the left side) and “Side” (for the right side) but Rik doesn’t understand that sometimes these words aren’t meant for her so she keeps switching over and shoving him out of position.
We’d been walking The Corridor of Doom several times a week for a couple of months before lockdown hit. At first there were Injured Children and Dropped Ice Creams galore (fortunately the plants seem to be quite hardy). We made some progress and we were actually getting through without any casualties a couple of times a week before lockdown hit.
When I tried it this week there were four Injured Children (and to be honest a couple of them may not survive their injuries). Hopefully we will improve more quickly this time…
I Need to Stop Nagging
One of the things I’m really pleased with is Able’s off-lead recall. He comes reliably the first time I call him, and if he’s a long way away he comes FAST – faster than he typically runs when he’s hooning aimlessly around the park. I do have to keep my wits about me and call him before we get too close to other people (who are a very tempting distraction indeed) but he’s far ahead of where any of my other puppies were at his age.
During lockdown there obviously haven’t been dogs exercising off-lead in the park, and the resident ducks have become rather cocky about how close they get to dog walkers. This week Able has taken off at full speed after a waddling of ducks several times – and turned around and run back when I called him every time. Although perhaps he could spin round a little more tightly, rather than making a turn wider than the Interislander so that he can keep an eye on his ducky friends for a few more moments…
But I’ve also noticed several times when I’ve called him and there’s been no reaction whatsoever, even when he hasn’t been doing anything particularly interesting at the time. This is just a little bit scary for me – perhaps three weeks of no practice was enough to ruin my recall forever? – but luckily I have figured out the pattern.
My puppy pays absolutely no attention to any words out of my mouth on walks, when he’s within a 2 metre radius of me.
Why?
Because I’ve spent the last three weeks walking him through this park on lead, and I’ve been too lazy to insist on proper loose lead manners every time my puppy wants to go somewhere just beyond his reach. Instead I’ve been saying his name over and over and over again in the hopes that it will distract him from the delicious scent he wants to investigate. And for some reason I’ve been walking him on a regular length lead so that these walks have been excruciatingly boring for him – I could at least have clipped a couple together to give him a bit more freedom.
I’ve also got out of the habit of taking a tug toy on our walks. Next week I will remember to pop it in my pocket before I leave, and I will call my puppy from close distance at least once every two minutes. If he doesn’t come, I’ll walk up to him and take his collar and bring him back to where I was standing when I called him, and then wait for eye contact before I let him go. And then I’ll call him again immediately, and we’ll have a massive tug toy party to help build value for responding to his name at close distance again.