Re-reading my own old blog posts

 Peppa raced out the door this afternoon when our neighbour called, and we did our usual heart-searching about our awful standard of dog training. 

And then I began to wonder whether we had the same issues, so many years ago, when we had Penny living with us. Our vet agrees with us in referring to her as 'Saint Penny', haha. In comparison to Peppa she was indeed a saint.

I thought I'd look back at my own old posts from 2007, when Penny was around the age Peppa is now. And I'm finding it not only entertaining, but also actually helpful. 

One thing I'm noticing is that Peppa is more of a digger than Saint Penny was. I might have made an error of judgment in letting her 'help' me when I was weeding around the strawberries. She sure did love digging that big hole! It was a bit of a pity that a few of the strawberry plants ended up strewn around the area. But hey, she had fun, and it wasn't all that hard to replant the ones she removed.

I guess we'll find out soon if I've created a 'digging monster'.

I'm going to do a search on my old blog for references to digging and see what comes up. In the meantime, I'm intending to scroll through fifteen years of Penny's blogs to see which links still work and make a note on each post as to which links are no longer viable.

Off to have a whale of a time at the beach

Penny and I are off to Tarra Valley for a while. Given that one of our main activities there is walking on The Ninety Mile Beach, I was interested to read in The Age newspaper recently that Museum victoria is excavating the skeleton of a whale from under the sand at that part of the beach.

Here's hoping they've dug it up by the time we get there, or they might have Penny helping. She loves digging at the beach.

I'll let you know how she went when we get back...

a digging dog

A mystery has been solved.

 A few weeks ago a night-time intruder came to our garden and dug up my pak choy seedlings. Or was it an intruder?

 This week Penny has been inside and out with a foul-smelling 'thing' she's dug up from the garden. We can't figure out what it is, but when she chews on it, red meat is revealed. (No one's going close, to check it out.) The most probable explanation is that it's a piece of rabbit torso. Sometimes the taste of rabbit is too strong for her and it needs to be buried for a few days to ripen to a deliciousness we can't appreciate.

 As I tippy-toed along behind to see where she would rebury it, all was revealed. She's the culprit who dug up the seedlings, burying her treasure.

I didn't see where she's buried it this time, but here's hoping this little fence will keep her away from it if it's in the same spot. I figure the meat will be a nice fertiliser for the rainbow chard and purple podded Dutch peas that grow nearby.

I  try to be philosophical about digging, because she's a dog, after all, but I'll be disappointed if she disturbs the roots of the gorgeous peas.

Penny learns to dig

Penny's never been a great digger, so it was quite a surprise recently when she started digging a hole at the beach. On that occasion she was with Byron, Cindy's chocolate lab. Penny thinks Byron is the smartest, best leader in the world, so I think she may have decided to copy him.

 Well, during one of our recent walks on The Ninety Mile Beach, she outdid herself, copying Byron's trick of digging a hole to bury a tennis ball (or a stick).

 She dug...

and dug...

and dug...

and dug...

until she was satisfied.

Penny digs without the pawz shoe to protect her foot

Well, Penny had a fabulous time at the beach today! I decided not to take my camera - not sure why - and of course there were heaps of wonderful shots I could have taken.

 I thought we'd try the trip without the protection of the Pawz shoes I'd bought - once again, I'm not sure why I made such a silly decision. I think it was because I wanted to see how she would go. Well, Penny surprised me by deciding, after racing around with the other dogs in Cindy's walking group, to dig a hole to China. She hasn't dug at the beach in years, and who would have guessed she'd give her surgery scar such a workout?

I grabbed my old phone to get a few shots of her:

 digging

sitting in her hole (yep, I know her head is missing! It was so sunny I couldn't see the screen of the phone. But the picture gives a bit of an idea of how deep the hole was.)

lying in her hole

She was happy!

And when we got home, her scar didn't look too good! At first we thought the whole thing was opened up, but on calmer reflection we've decided to wait until tomorrow evening to see if it is scabbed over. She's not licking it or attending to it in any way, so I don't think it is worrying her. We've wiped it a couple of times with antiseptic.

Penny learns a new command - 'dig'

When we used to go to K9 Kompany - I won't lament again the demise of that wonderful venue - Cindy was teaching Penny the command 'dig'. We would do it by hiding a treat under a towel and when Penny started to use her paws to move the towel aside to get at the treat, I'd say 'dig'.

What is the point of the 'dig' command, you might ask. Well, if I remember correctly, it's intended for film work. The dog learns to lie down and then do the 'dig' movement, and it looks as if the dog is dying. I wouldn't want to see any films where dogs die, so I guess I'll never find out whether I've remembered this correctly. But I seem to recall some movies where horses got shot and lay there moving their legs like that. (Not that I want to see dying horses in movies either, by the way!)

Our attempt at the trick wasn't all that successful, to be honest, maybe because, when we first got her and I read all the dog books, they recommended discouraging digging. So she now has to unlearn the fact that digging is not desirable.

However, when Penny went to stay with Cindy for five fun-filled days, Cindy sent us some pictures of Penny digging in a sand pit up there in Healesville, so I thought we could try the command again at the beach this morning.

And yes, she's learned to dig on command. Or has she learned to dig whenever she wants to? I guess time will tell on that one.

Here she is digging on command:



It's a rather energetic activity, as you can see from this photo: