Who's a clever Zu-Zu?

[flick]

(They're even, helpfully, a different colour to the runners' eggs.)

I had my first poached duck egg of the year for lunch! Hopefully she'll be a bit happier now that she's got the first one out of the way. Hopefully, that will manifest itself as hissing scarily when Bob comes sniffing at her, rather than adopting the 'would you like to have sex' position. She's a bit mixed up, is Erzulie.

Bob is a smart lad, and has realised that he needs to come when called if he's on the lunge line but that we can't really do anything when he's off it. Unfortunately, he's not smart enough to realise that he can't go off the lead until he comes all the time. Sigh.

Comments

[juliet]

once again this is sounding very familiar ;)

A trick we used courtesy of one of the dog behaviourists was to drop the end of the lunge line (so Sid was dragging it behind her) and then stand on it when calling her. Especially if she was moving away from us at the time. If you time it right the dog starts thinking that you *can* stop them even when you're not actually holding the lead. In theory this then translates to thinking the same when there's no lead at all. (In truth I think Sid does/did know the difference, but it did seem to help build the "come when called" habit.)

[flick]

I remember you saying that at some point, and indeed have been doing it! It's probably more effective if you have a smaller field, but it does seem to be helping.