A New Boyfriend and Freestyle Practice

A girl can never have too many admirers. However, I like them to be well behaved and they must follow my signals about what is the appropriate way to play with me. I am very good at flirting with them and training them to play appropriately.

Jix is a handsome, young Retriever/Collie who was recently adopted by a nice family. They are doing a great job in training him but they told Barbara that he gets very overexcited when he sees new dogs. Barbara suggested that they come to the training center so that Jix could meet me.



He did get very excited when he saw me, lunging and barking. I am used to this reaction and it doesn't bother me. I knew Jix was just stunned by my Gordon Setter beauty. What boy wouldn't be?? So we practiced walking by each other until Jix calmed down. He got lots of good treats for passing by calmly. After awhile he realized that I was not impressed by his antics and settled nicely.




We got let off leash and of course Jix wanted to sniff me. Now I am happy to be sniffed politely, but intensive sniffing of my personal areas is quite annoying. My body is my own! I flipped around and told Jix to behave.



He stopped but then couldn't help himself (how could he resist?) and went back to trying to sniff me. I chased him off smartly!



After a few times Jix got the message. See how he is politely averting his eyes? That is how I like all my boyfriends to behave. Then we had some nice playtime together.



On Saturday we met up with our friends from the Carolina Canine Freestyle Guild for a meeting and practice. The meeting was so boring that I fell asleep. What can people talk about for an hour and a half?? Finally it was the dogs turn to get in the ring and practice. We worked on our freestyle routines and then I got to learn something new - platform pivots.



I had to learn to stand with my two front feet on a little platform while my back feet stayed on the ground. At first I thought that this was very silly and kept jumping over the platform. But Barbara kept clicking and treating me for putting my paws on the platform and after awhile it was very easy.



Then I had to learn to move my rear feet while my front ones stayed on the platform. This is harder than it looks but with clicks and treats I could do it.



Barbara was quite pleased with this. She said it will help me with my left pivots in freestyle and rally. It is also good exercise. Now she wants to teach it to Ambrose although where we will get a platform large enough for his big feet, I do not know.