Carry things for my Mistress 10 march 2001 Carry things for my Mistress 10 march 2001
 Shall we go to the store Abbe? |
I can tell that Abbe starts to be a
fully grown dog now. He is soon two years old and the
brain starts to really mature on a rottweiler around this
age. He has been very good all the time at remember words
and actions, but it is now I really notice that I can
combine things that we have practised in different steps
during his growth. Abbe has for a long time felt very proud when he may help me to carry things home from the store, when shopping. He probably notice how happy I get when he is such a good boy but also because when we meet people they shine up in their faces when seeing Abbe walking past them, carrying various things from the store. I feel soooo proud of him and he notices that because he stretches his whole body and trotts in a very noble way. Tails pointing up in a bow and head held high... |
 Hurry mistress! Where is the reward? |
I have been putting him through small tests. All the time I have been really careful with letting him carry things that can not break, for example tin-cans, dogbones, ciggarrett packages and so on. Since I noticed that he put large prints from his teeth into more soft things I had to do something about it. He held too tight into things, so that they sometimes broke (he probably thought that he was allowed to taste it...haha). |
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THE
TEST... Lately he has had to carry some more fragile things to make him understand that he is not allowed to hold too tight. For about a week ago I bought a red onion and gave it to him to "carry". He grabbed it and of course his long teeth punctured it. I was quick to say "hold on" and as a 'punishment' he had to carry the damaged onion all the way home. He didn't like it... But it was just as if he then got the point. The next shopping we did I gave him a new onion and then he held it soooo nicely. When coming home he of course got LOTS of praise and doggy-candy. |
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Today
I got further with the training. I gave him a banana to
carry - I thought I should be able to see tooth-prints
easily in the shell of the banana, but my good boy has
understand the lesson... There where no prints at all in
the banana. He had carried it sooo softly all the way
home. His reward were to eat the banana, together with
LOTS of praise. Tomatoes and egg will be the next training session. Raw eggs can really be a test hahaha - we will see how it goes.... I have also put in som variations in this activity. Sometimes I make him stop on the way home and then he have to sit beside me and "hold on" - without being restless and start to chew on the thing he is carrying. Sometimes I make him "heal" when carrying and sometimes he is allowed to walk "in front of me". He
gets a little tired of doing things simoultaneously - but
as his age progress I put on more and more demands on
him. |
Voff Voff
The text is in Swedish and means:
"Hold on" is all she is thinking of....
It is meant as a little joke, but jokes are hard to translate into another language. Sorry about that...