Houdini

Yesterday, I taught a private lesson to a client from my puppy class. The appointment was actually scheduled for Monday, but Scorchie was on crate rest... and if Scorchie couldn't make it, she wanted to reschedule. I swear, it's really all about Scorch, not me. :)

So the dogs had a nice little playtime, and then her cocker spaniel had a nice little lesson. My client, by the way, lives in a BEAUTIFUL condo with fantastic gulf views. Scorch considers himself a society dog after having been there. So we were working the dogs in the courtyard and then took them into the small parking garage for some off-leash playtime. We entered through the open garage door and rounded a corner. There was another slatted garage door there, pulled down. My client said, "They'll be fine in here, the only way out is the way we came in."

In literature, this device would be called "foreshadowing".

The boys were running around joyfully, and no sooner had the words come out of my clients mouth that Scorch found a gap in the closed garage door and squeezed through it. He stood right outside the door looking victorious, then started sniffing a bush while we stood there open-mouthed. When I recovered my senses, I called him and he squeezed back through.

There truly isn't much that can contain this dog. Bedroom doors, backyard doors, sliding doors, windows, soft crates...


...he has opened representatives from each of these categories with ease (although no destruction, thankfully). Now we can add GARAGE DOORS to the list.

It was a beautiful day outside, so after his demo-dogging job, we stopped at Bird Key park for our daily training session (daily!!! I've actually kept up training him EVERY SINGLE DAY!).


He was a little wired at first, as always, but it definitely took him less time to settle down. The new location work we've done lately has helped. He gave me some nice heelwork (forge-y, but our criteria was more attention than position) and we worked on signals. He needed some gentle reminding that he needs to look at me when left on a stand-stay because signals might be coming. He made some nice improvements.

And of course, we worked on "stays" so I could take his picture by the water. (All photos in this post are unedited cell phone pics, so pardon any weirdness)




Overall, a beautiful, successful training day... with standard Houdini behavior.