Mini-Adventure: Eagle River and the Puppy

First off, to whoever was walking their puppy near Eagle River last Monday, I'm sorry.

Shila isn't the best of dogs when she is on leash and out of her element. I have *GOT* to remember to bring the squirt gun with me on all walks outside of the neighborhood. She terrified a puppy, and quite possibly the owner when they approached our truck mere seconds after letting the dogs out. Thankfully I yelled out "She's new and kind of a pain. Not too friendly." so owner man could hide his precious puppy paws away before they were nipped off. Again dude, sorry. I hope we meet in a more civil way later on down the road.

We took a walk down a path following Eagle River and walked over the ice a bit. Sam enjoyed the cool breeze and the watery noises, Shila just wanted to sniff sniff sniff. After continuing on quite a ways we found a good location to let Sam roam free while we worked with Shila on-leash. She doesn't like to put any part of her except her feet on the snow so 'sit' and 'lay down' were out of the question. Instead I propped up a fallen birch on an angle and get her jumping up and over it. I'm not very coordinated yet while working with Shila. Watching me you'd think I had no idea what I'm doing - and I don't. Shila was a hopping away, she only wanted to go under the birch once or twice to chase after Teresa who was teasing her from the other side of the hurdle. Jump up on the hurdle, jump down off the hurdle. Kind of a silly approach but it works, won't win her any speed competitions however. She'd hop over, turn around and prop herself up on the hurdle expecting a treat. I learned I need to be throwing the treat over the hurdle when she just starts to lift off.

Teresa really doesn't want me getting my hopes up about Shila being a flyballer. I agree, and noted she said nothing about agility courses. But it's gonna be about the same there too, Shila needs to be civil and comfortable being around strange dogs.

Is a muzzled trip to the dog park in order? Would that just torment her to no end? Am I just being impatient? I mean really. I haven't had her long enough for her to just know how things are done.

Mini-Adventure: Beach Lake Fun

Beach Lake in Birchwood is still frozen over enough to walk all over. Just follow the tracks of others and avoid the obvious holes where people have broken through (just kidding). Shila got to wear her special little coat we call the armadillo coat. The picture doesn't do it justice, but the videos below do. She looks pretty silly in the coat.

Shila ran off a little bit, which always worries us. We had her off leash in the middle of the lake and she still picked up a scent and went running to the shore to hunt it down. We just bought a training collar that should help out with that in the future. It worked wonders on Sam when he had one (THEN TOOK OFF AND PROCEEDED TO HIDE SOMEWHERE IN A BOG). Sigh...

I'm opening up this post to a little competition. Send me a link to a video or photo of your dog doing a trick. Here's a Shila Trick for everybody:

Speak (but can't seem to sit).


Sam doing his thing, Shila doing "UP!" with quite a bit of spring.


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