Friday

 

It was a nice 78 degrees and cloudy this morning on our causeway walk. The high temperature for the day was 86 degrees with the wind blowing 7 mph in the morning and up to 27 mph when the afternoon thunderstorms came through, which cooled things off considerably.

After lunch, I had just enough time to ride my bike to and from the outdoor gym at Weaver Park before the afternoon thunderstorms came. It rained 1.78 inches in just a few hours.

We got Chinese takeout for dinner: home style bean curd over rice with a side of vegetable lo mein.

We have walked, played fetch, played mental exercises, and practiced week one commands multiple times. We have moved on to improved leash walking and drop it commands from future lessons. I think we continue to extinguish undesirable behaviors. Today was a pretty good day. 

He seems to have acquiesced to the new way of doing things. We are doing better tiring him out mentally and physically, and we’re using distractions when he’s bad, instead of getting mad and putting him in the crate.

Toby’s not as stubborn as Dexter. For example, there’s a leash walking tip for when dogs pull on the leash. You are supposed to turn around and walk in the opposite direction for a few steps and then turn around and walk in the original direction. Toby was digging in chasing some scent pulling John and then me, his no-pull harness bunched up around his neck like a bad Christmas sweater. It only took two reversals for him to calm down and walk politely. We were amazed. That technique never worked on Dexter. I once spent 45 minutes going back and forth in front of our house trying to take him on a walk. It didn’t matter to him which direction you were going as long as it was full speed. 

Today’s bike routes to the causeway and Weaver Park 

Miles walked: 7.3

Miles biked: 11