Thursday 5 May 2011

practising our routine for Honey's competition

Penny and I have chosen our music for Honey's dancing competition and we're starting to practise. In the kitchen, of course.

Here we are trying out two movements. One is sitting still. Hmmm...shouldn't be too hard, but who knows, on the day it will probably go pear-shaped. The second is picking up something and walking beside me with it in her mouth. Not as easy as I thought it would be.

But we're having fun.

8 comments:

Amber-Mae said...

BOL! I laughed everytime she dropped that stick. It is just so funny. HEE HEE

Molly the Airedale said...

You're so smart, Penny! Practice makes perfect, ya know!

Love ya lots
Maggie and Mitch

Unknown said...

Ooh, well done, Penny! My human is so envious that you can actually carry something in your mouth AND walk!! She's been trying to teach me that for ages but - um - us Danes aren't very good at "multi-tasking"!! :-)

This is getting so exciting - can't wait to see more of your routine!! :-) And see what music you've chosen!!

Slobbers,
Honey the Great Dane

i said...

Have not been coming by for a while now but it's really great to see Penny doing so well now. I'm sure she'll do very well in the competition!

How do you train her to pick up the stick? I'd really like to train Happy to pick up her toys and keep them away LOL. She's always leaving them lying around everywhere!

parlance said...

Serendipity, thinking back, I reckon I did two things: Firstly, I clicked when she put her nose near an object, then later clicked if she took it in her mouth, and later I held off with the click for a moment or two, gradually lengthening the time she held it.

The other approach was to simply praise her and click if she spontaneously took something into her mouth, then gradually started saying "pick it up".

The easiest part of the picking up toys trick is to just hold a bucket under her mouth when she's holding something. She eventually drops it and it falls into the bucket and I reward her.

I think it's hilarious when Penny has toys all over the place and I come along and get her to put them all away! Of course, as soon as they are in the box she just gets them out again, lol.

parlance said...

Amber-Mae, I also thought it was so funny. She loves picking things up, but unfortunately for me she also loves dropping them!

parlance said...

Maggie and Mitch, we're practising hard! I'm so glad Honey's competition is happening, because it has raised our spirits enormously. It was rather depressing to go straight from a cruciate operation and months of recovery into a bout of skin problems.

parlance said...

Honey, Penny picked up a stick in the park today and trotted alongside me, and instead of ignoring her I walked along saying, 'Hold!' and 'Good girl!'. I reckon it must have looked pretty silly, but what the heck, we've got to get some practice in every time we can, lol.