keeping a dog occupied after surgery

It's been a lo-ong week without our daily walks. Penny is still under vet's orders to take it easy, because of the stitches in her chest. He says that walking would put strain on the wound.

In order to pretend she's still going for walks, we often pop her in the car and take her to a nearby park to mooch around for five minutes. Yesterday we went to a local footy oval, and on the way home I noticed  a green space in our locality. After walking with Penny for eight years, I thought I would know them all, but here was yet another.

It seemed a rather unappealing place, to be honest.

But Penny found some interesting smells.

There was some lovely street art for me to admire while Penny looked around.

Penny's still not feeling good, I think, because after five minutes at each venue, she led the way back to the car. And look how low she was carrying her tail.

kitchen training for dogs

It's been a while since Penny and I have played games in the kitchen, so I thought I'd post this 'warts and all' series of clips from yesterday.

I placed two familiar toys in the doorway of the kitchen...

...after throwing an assortment of toys around the floor. (I have no idea why I did that, seeing it had nothing to do with the training except to add some confusion, but I enjoyed tossing them out of the toy box and seeing Penny dash joyfully around.)

The idea was for me to show a toy to Penny and she would go to find the matching toy.

She was pretty good at it, seeing we haven't played this game for nearly a year. I didn't react to the wrong toy being fetched, except to continue to ask for the correct one. It was funny to see her tail drooping as she realised she wasn't going to be praised for the wrong one.

However, it was lovely to see the wagging tail the rest of the time.

No one watching her could doubt there was some problem-solving going on. Have a look!