 There really IS a Training Fairy!!!!
As most of you already know, we gave up training Higgins to do anything at all pretty early on -- just too hard to get the Energizer Bunny's attention. However, now that he is 15 months old, we have discovered that all this time there has been a Training Fairy coming in at night to teach him things......
He is a Gold Medal class Frisbee dog (soft little disc) and we never taught him to do it. And when he catches it -- and ONLY when he catches it -- he does a victory lap at full speed around two campsites. We never taught him that either.
The other day, a friend dropped by and was throwing Higgin's Frisbee for him, but before he threw it, he told Higgins to "Sit!" And Higgins SAT. And he would repeat the sit anytime the man asked him to sit. Then I told him to sit. And he STOOD there looking at me like I was stupid. When another stranger asked him to sit later that day, his butt hit the ground in a second. But not for Don or for me!!! Until we had a little talk with him last night. A really nice little talk. No angry words. We just asked him WHY he wouldn't sit for us. So he SAT. And he will now sit any time we ask him to!!!! And we never taught him anything about sitting on command.
The Training Fairy also spoke to him about his crate, too, and he loves it. Puts himself right to bed, and always has.......
So now we are saying "Please" a lot and that is helping......
But I wish the Training Fairy would say something more about pooping in the house. Higgins is pretty good lately.....about 99.4% of the time......but she needs to talk to him just a wee bit more.....because he really doesn't listen to his parents all that well........ |