frozen food and tricks

Now that the hot weather has finally hit, it's time to think of some entertainment in the house.

For one thing, I've frozen half a can of food for Penny to eat tonight. (My favorite brand is ZiwiPeak, from New Zealand.

And I made a discovery. I just can't throw anything out, and those little tinfoil patty pans that Christmas mince pies come in looked as if they might be useful. I was planning to try putting them around seedlings because I've heard that snails don't like sliding over the metallic feel of aluminium foil. But in the present heat I think the reflected heat would cook the little plants.

But the foil pans are just the right size to cover a half-used can of dog food.





And I think it might be just the weather to practise some tricks in the house instead of being outside in the heat. I don't know if we could conquer such a demanding one as Johann's 'suitcase trick', though.

increasing a dog's vocabulary

After watching more of the BBC television programme, 'The Secret Life of Dogs', I was amazed by the canine genius who has a vocabulary of more than three hundred words. Betsy can bring on command a huge array of named objects. And, if you watch the video clip, you will see that she can even conceptualise from a scale model of an object to the thing itself, and even from a photograph, which I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it on the BBC.

Now, Penny isn't a genius, that's for sure. But, until she had surgery on her cruciate ligament and we stopped most of her activities, she was using her brain for tricks, doggie dancing and training, every week, if not every day.

When we were told she needed to take care with the leg, we began to restrict her activities. We eventually resumed walking, and now swimming, but we forgot about the intellectual stimulation she needs.

So, it's back to training for Penny. Here's a video of our usual amateurish style of 'kitchen training'. We're challenging ourselves to increase Penny's vocabulary and I reckon by the time she's 110 (human) years old, she should know as many words as Betsy.

doing nothing day after day

Penny's been surprisingly calm about her quiet, boring days while we wait for her leg to be x-rayed and manipulated. Tomorrow, thank goodness! Most of the day she just lies around, not even sitting at the door to look out for visitors. I don't know if this is because it's painful to get up, or whether she's just resigned herself to boredom.



As well as playing with Nina Ottosson toys for interest, we thought it might be good for her to practise some stationary tricks. One that we've never conquered is "hold", so we've been working on that one. As long as there's food treats available, Penny will work at it, so we did about four ten-minute sessions today and basically conquered it. Here's an excerpt of the sessions.
(Until I looked at this clip, I didn't realise how much she was moving around. I hope I haven't done her any harm by not making her rest completely. It seems impossible to lie around every minute, but I do realise that if she has an operation she may have to do exactly that for a couple of weeks.)

dancing with dogs in Australia

When Penny was swimming at Kepala, she probably thought she was there to have fun. (After all, what else is a pet dog's life about?). However, I was intent on helping her to get fit so she could go to the first-ever session of the newly-formed Dancing With Dogs Club of Victoria.

Well, we made it. Today Penny and I joined a class at Foundation level. It was great fun and we'll be practising what we were told. (Thank goodness for pen and paper, otherwise I would most likely forget everything as I walked out the door.) Later, at home, we've practised 'heel' - yep, after all these years we've never quite got a handle on that basic move. (Red face)

We tried 'on your mark', with Penny putting her front feet on a thick book and circling around the book in position, facing me as I also circled the book. No problems.

Next we tried this activity with a long ruler laid on the ground, touching the big book. The idea is to get Penny more aware of what her back feet are doing. As you'll see in the video clip to come, she could sort of do this. The final step was to raise the ruler so it was a couple of centimetres off the ground, one end lying on the book.

That she can't do, yet. She definitely knows her back legs are nearing the ruler, so I don't think it will be long before she gets it.

Cindy's pet services gives us lots of fun things to do

In yesterday's post about training at night I forgot to mention the important fact that it's at Lilydale and the classes are run by Cindy.

Lots of fun in a relaxed and interestingly different environment.

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:

a dog video that makes you feel good

Sometimes dogs just make us feel good.

And the video clip just posted by Johann shows one of those times.

In it we see Gracie doing an extreme version of the 'pull the socks off the human' trick.

an old dog learns to be happy

Scruffy, who visited us for the first time on 14th July, after he lost his best canine friend, came again today. His human loves to see him happy, but said to me, 'You can't teach an old dog new tricks." Well, that was an immediate challenge, and I said I could teach him to 'sit' within one minute.

Here he is after a couple of minutes. (He's the fluffy white dog.)



The lovely little even older dog is Bonnie, our regular visitor.

dogs train for film work

Today the K9 Kompany presented a series of demonstrations for the public at the Lilydale show.

Penny and I took part in two types of demonstration - Ideal Dog of Australia and All Sports.

But we were onlookers at the highlight of the day, Animal Actors, because we're not in that class.

It was interesting to see how the tricks we're learning in All Sports could be developed into film work. Cindy and two students demonstrated that dogs need to learn to do tricks at a distance because the trainer can't be visible in the film.

A small piece of tape on the floor marked the nearest point the trainer was allowed to approach the dog during filming. I've taken a shot here from a different angle, showing the trainer's hand at right - you can see the dog watching her.



The story behind the filming was that Cindy was reading the paper and the dogs would try to get her attention. One of the dogs jumped up on the couch with her, barked and laid its head on her leg. When all this failed, it pushed a roller across in front of her.




In this shot the trainer is not in view - this is how the shot would appear in a film.

Inspector Rex plays music, clever as always

Penny and I watched the Austrian crime show Inspector Rex again tonight and Rex was a canine genius as usual. One trick was to play a toy that involved pressing a section of the game to make a musical note sound. The part to be pressed was large and easily manipulated by a dog's paw.

It was an episode from season four, when he is with Brandtner - a story about a classical pianist who wants his son to be a famous performer. Of course, seeing it's such a great show for us dog-lovers, I won't give away any more of the plot.

He learned to play four notes, repeating them after a child character played them a couple of times for him. I think the piece that was played repeatedly in the show was Kinderszenen by Robert Schumann, and maybe the notes Rex played were from that piece. I've got a memory like a sieve, so the memory of what Rex played was gone half a minute after he did it.

But I'd certainly like to get my hands on the toy. I reckon Penny and I could have fun on it. I'd love to know how many notes she could memorise and I feel sure she could learn the basic idea of pressing buttons - for treats, of course. Penny's not inclined to work without being paid a fair wage!

I've browsed the internet, searching 'musical toys' but I guess I'd have to be lucky to stumble across the toy I want. But, as they say, you never know your luck in a big city, so I'll keep my eyes open when I'm in toy shops.

dog learns the hold it trick

Penny tried a new trick today at K9 Kompany - pulling along a cute little toy cart of toys. But we didn't have any luck.

The idea was that she would use her mouth to grab a ball on a string attached to the handle and as she pulled it the cart would move behind her. However, I realised she had forgotten the trick we practised last year called 'Hold'. If she doesn't get the idea that she has to 'hold' the ball as she comes towards me, then she'll let it go as soon as she feels the weight of the cart.

So, tonight it was back to basics in our 'kitchen training' schedule. I used a clicker as my marker instead of the more usual 'Yess!" because I found it difficult to mark the exact moment when she was still holding the object.

(By the way, the thing she was holding was a strong, flexible toy made by Aussie Dog - I think it's probably manufactured from fire hose, but I'm not sure. We've had ours for years and it's as good as the day I bought it.)