Day 11 -- New Friends

Mollie met a new friend today. Rosario is a 9 week old puppy in training to be a service dog. It's really nice to have puppy play groups for your dog when they are young if you know of others who have a puppy around the same age. Both puppies should be working on their vaccination series and healthy. They need to be monitored in their play so that it doesn't get too rough, no one is learning bad behaviors, and teaching opportunities are utilized.

It's helpful to know about dog body language so you know when to intervene. In this picture Mollie is trying to get small and roll over in a more submissive position. They are pretty even players with a lot of give and take. They switch roles frequently throughout play. This makes it much easier to monitor. I just need to step in if one has the other pinned or if someone has an ear and won't let go. It can be a little more challenging when they are not so evenly matched.

In this picture you can see Healey (the older dog) has her ears pinned back a bit. We call Healey "the fun police" because she likes to monitor dogs when they are playing and she barks if she things they are getting out of hand.

This is a great opportunity to practice her recalls. She is completely distracted and running in the opposite direction of me.

And she is turning on a dime and running to me when I call her. I wouldn't try this in an unfenced area. That adds to the level of distraction quite a bit. But she can build up to that with practice. Recalls are something you have to practice throughout the life of the dog. They can get rusty at this skill if it's not used regularly. But it is a really fun one for the dogs and oh so pleasant for the owner to have a dog who comes bounding towards them when they are called.

Part of building her recall is rewarding her for random check ins with me. If she is out playing and running around and then comes over to sit in front of me to "check in" with me, I am going to reward that. That's a pretty big deal to have a dog interested in you when there are a lot of other fun things happening around them. It definitely warrants a treat and praise.

And play sessions are a great time to practice her name recognition. If she doesn't respond to me by looking at me when I call her name, I'm not going to repeat her name. I simply walk up to her and wiggle a treat under her nose and lure it up to my eye. She's still learning to do this in distracting environments so I want to make sure that I always follow through with her so she doesn't learn to blow me off.