I mentioned that Spot ran into a rattlesnake in the post Rattled. We were impressed on his ability to actually absorb rattlesnake training and avoid the snake perfectly, so the great thing is that his memory is great. The bad thing is that his memory is great.
Shall I go on?
I always tuck him in like this. This is mid-day nap time at home. He is wondering why I must take pictures while he is trying to get some shut eye. You did your job of tucking me into bed now go please.
The morning after the hike we take Spot to go potty. Why wouldn’t we? He must relieve himself which involves a grassy well sniffed out place to take care of business. We get to his regular pee zone area. Spot stops, stares at the ground and ‘avoids’ the pee zone. Are you kidding me?
It was a full week of Spot ‘avoiding’ everything. Which makes me think why didn’t we do ‘poop avoidance training’ while he was a puppy when he thought breakfast was ‘dropped off’ every morning out on our front yard.
It was very sad at first because poor Spot would be trembling while peeing, and while leaving breakfast for others (just kidding, I pick up), he walks and leaves a long trail of bread-crumbs for us to dutifully pick up. Trembling, he would do the poo in record speed while maintaining this walking technique. If he couldn’t walk, I don’t think he could do it.
Every branch, rock, mud spot, leaf, puddle was now…a rattlesnake.
The poor little guy.
And at the park, the great joy in his life, the dog that will fetch the yellow ball for as long as you want him to because if he doesn’t the world will come to an end…didn’t fetch. His world had ended.
What were we going to do? Without the ball, how do we wear him out? That’s when we realized WE need the yellow ball just as much as Spot.
So…we walked the park instead of chasing the ball. He stuck to my side, avoiding all those very scary things such as grass! Every time we got close to the car he sat by the gate to go home. That was a first.
I thought, what would the dog whisper do? He would try to distract the dog with positive encouragement and not coddle him. Tough love. So that is what we did. We continued with our routine as usual and didn’t coddle him.
It took about a week and a half for him to get over it all. We are so glad he did, because sometimes he holds on to things forever! Apparently, he forgets some things after a week. Do you think Jack’s memory works the same way? Maybe I should go buy those shoes on Melrose and just tough out the week.
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