I’m not sure what is going on, and this is no complaint, but in the last three days my baby dog has made some HUGE leaps forward. I have struggled mightily with Julie Daniels’ ‘musical toys’ game. This is a game where I use several different toys and switch between them. The idea is that she learns that the toy I have in my hand, that I am making active, is better than the toy she has, the one that we were playing with a second ago. Historically, Bonney just picks a favorite and stands and barking at it to get me to keep interacting with her and that toy. I have video of it taking 7 or 11 or something minutes to get her to take up a different toy.

I scaled back, back, back, to two, exactly the same, foam balls. Eventually, she would come to me with one in her mouth and drop it to chase the second one. I started asking for a hand touch before I would throw another rock into the river for her to chase the splashes.

Suddenly, when I could only find one ball the other night, she would fetch one of the foam balls back to me and trade it for a treat before I threw it again. Yesterday in agility class, waiting for our turn, she would engage with one of two exact-copy felt ‘infinity’ toys, and when I turned my back and ran to a second one, she followed me and happily tugged the one in my hand instead of playing keep away or barking at the first toy.

Today, she went in the river and swam. Not just waded, she swam, really swam. For the first time. And she chased a stick into the water and for the first time brought it back to me to throw again. OK, she retrieved it again and took it off to chew, but this is all so many advancements in such a short number of days … I’m just gobsmacked.

What’s next? Oh, but wait, there’s more. I also offered her the weaves and she did fast, independent, correct, sets of 6 several times before I could stop her. Turns out she DID want the correct entry signal and the keep going signal. Glad I brought that back into my training routine!

And if none of that made any sense to you, please enjoy the view from my back porch.