Morning fun with Travis - playing fetch in my yard. Travis is great at fetching the ball and can find it if it lands in the tall grass or underbrush. He uses his nose and sniffs the ball out when it out of sight. Playing ball does get he very excited and he will not always give a fast sit on returning to me. If I hid the ball behind my back he will run around the yard sniffing and looking for the ball and will not pay attention to my calling his name. He does finally return to me when he cannot find it on the ground.
Meeting my dog Gigit
Once I put up the ball Travis tried to play with my thirty pound dog, Gigit. BUT Travis' high nervous and pounce-in-your-face style is not what works to win this girl's heart and Gigit growled and snapped at him. Gigit likes to play but she wants new dogs to flirt politely with her first.
Pond Fetching
At about two pm I take Travis for a walk through the woods to the larger pond. He is still pulling too much so I started to work on recalls (COME) on the trail. My son, Felix comes with us to video tape Travis fetching the ball from the pond. Typical lab - Travis LOVES to play fetch in water. He didn't shake off for each retrieve, but I still got wet, as he does like to shake once he gets near me.
He did do some choking on the pond water while retrieving the ball. He will learn to get the ball with less swallowing of water. I also tossed the ball on land and he jumped high to try to catch a bounced balled.
More road work
At about five pm I did a little more road running with Travis along side the golf cart - or it is more like road jogging as Travis is not into full out racing like Bruce was. Once back home I did some in yard ball tossing for him.
I kept Travis in his crate for part of the day and in his dog yard for part of the day. He has not jumped out of the yard again, but I am keeping him in a crate when I take off with my dogs for their two runs a day.
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| From Travis the Lab |
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