Mother’s been under the weather lately. She says she may have gotten some bug transmitted virus when we went walking near a heavily forested area in our neighbourhood. She keeps pawing at me saying “Romeo, mummy is dying.. dyiiiiinnnngggg” and I quickly scramble to get away from her as fast as I can! The good thing about this tho’ is that she’s been home since Friday last week and will only go back to work on Thursday!

Some more stuff Mother bought online (*rolls eyes*) came in the other day. Her favourites from that package are:

1. a book that teaches dogs play, shaping, exploring, memory skills (I have none), self awareness and puzzle solving;
2. a DVD that is supposed to help her teach me to automatically go to her without thinking when she says “Romeo come!”; and
3. a toy dangling from a nylon rope attached to a plastic stick – looks like a fishing rod.

The book is called Learning Games by Kay Laurence. Mother wants to teach me alot of stuff from there (oh boy)! The games listed in there not only help work the mind but also the body and the steps are described very clearly. There’s a column which details what the dog is to do, another column next to that telling you where to click to mark and a last column which tells you where to reward (eg. throw it somewhere or direct from the hand). It looked complicated at first but I heard Mother saying “Wow! This book is really easy to use!” before she came looking for me to be her guinea pig. Some of the games taught include teaching a dog to walk around a pole at a distance, getting a dog to step onto a brick/book using its 2 back feet only, and teaching a dog how to spot the odd one out. Mother has tried the odd one out game with me using 2 square coasters and a round one. She started off with only one square and one round one and kept clicking and treating when I pawed the round one. Then she brought in the other square coaster. Then she would sneakily move the pieces around, but ha-HA! She couldn’t fool me! I could pick the round one out every time!

The DVD is quite cool. It actually benefited me coz I’ve been getting alot of liver treats after Mother watched it. It’s called “Really Reliable Recall – Train your dog to come when called.. no matter what!” by Leslie Nelson. It’s a video of a seminar this woman gave but the tips were reeeally good. The aim is to get me to automatically turn away from whatever I’m doing and run to her. And the way to do this (amongst other steps) is for Mother to only call me to come when she’s sure that I would, and then reward me for THIRTY SECONDS (yahoo!!) by giving me tiny bits of liver treats over and over (it’s called “fine dining” as opposed to “fast food”, and leaves a more memorable impression). Mother says I’m good at home – I will run down 3 stories when she hollers my name – but no good outdoors where there are other more interesting things.

I looooove the fishing rod toy! I think Mother bought it coz she was getting abit lazy, but it’s actually good fun for me. All she does is stand there and flick her wrist or arm about making the fleece lump at the end of the nylon rope move on the floor or jiggle in the air and I’m off after it! She makes it quite hard for me to get it but I’m SMART. I go for the ROPE. Heheheh. This toy is supposed to help build drive and Mother was amazed when after like 5 minutes of play, I was off running laps around the house like a speed demon!

I tooootally rock I tell you. Mother took out part 2 of the 3 christmas gift puzzles she got me and I had it down faster than you can say my full name! This one consists of small overturned cups with treats underneath on a round wooden plate with special indents for each cup. I’m supposed to lift the cups with my mouth only not paw at it. It didn’t budge anyway when I tried to smack it off. Then when I put my nose/mouth near it Mother cheered and use her hands to clamp my jaw around a cup and helped me lift one off. She did it like 2 more times and I figured it out for myself! I went around removing each cup like a PRO!  She was elated! And kept telling me I’m a smart doggy! The problem however, she says, is that I have no concept of memory. I will always go back to sniff cups I have lifted looking for treats, or go back to the indents in the round wooden plate to look for treats I’ve already eaten. I did the same thing with the sliding tiles puzzle. I would keep sliding the same tiles back only to find NOTHING coz I’ve already eaten the treat!! Mother keeps slapping her forehead and saying things like “just when I think you’re smart, you go do something like that”.

That reminds me of our walk the other night. She was pleased with how I reacted to strangers with dogs and she was telling me how great I am. Then I sort of didn’t see where I was going and one of my hind legs ended up in a gutter hole. Mother howled with laughter (to me) and then went on to comment about how I can be so silly sometimes. When we got home, I chewed her glasses until the lens broke for revenge. Hmpf.