Lucy has practiced her restrained tug work this week on a little fleece tug. :-) She was not biting prior to this week, just sort of chasing things and doing little mouthy bites. But, she has suddenly grown and her body is tightening up from the big floppy uncoordinated feet that a Molosser breed has as a puppy and now she is starting to get a bit more serious about her play. She loved chasing the toy (it is on a long line, somewhat like a kitty toy) and then catching it and biting it without letting go. Of course, she still lets go, but shes holding on better and loving it. At the end of the game she always gets to run out of the room still holding the toy. She runs out to the parking lot and prances around with that toy in her mouth for several minutes - so proud of herself. Needless to say, this is baby work and she is not old enough for me to really learn the tugging techniques borrowed from protection work that are used in play to increase a dogs motivation. Most of the class has dogs old enough to do this, but I dont, so mostly Ive just watched this being taught. But today, Michael used his dogs for everyone in the class to practice their tug work. Here are the dogs I got to practice on: Pi: youtube/watch?v=HxFZhQbM8i8 This video is exactly what we were doing. He was the most amazing dog - like an old Zen master. When I looked into his eyes, I felt this sense of calmness. Really special. The not so special part is that he likes to use his legs to grab your legs if you dont move the tug enough (you can see a little of that in the video). In the first few minutes of me working with him, he grabbed me by the leg and it hurt! He needs to get his nails cut! LOL I have these long, bruised scratches all down my thighs. You can see that the student in the video is working pretty hard to move Pi around. Hes only 70 lbs. but looks and feels much bigger. Lucy is already half his weight! It was kind of a bittersweet moment for me because he is just a little under the weight my Roxy was. She lived to play tug and I got my arm shaken off regularly by her. I hadnt played tug with a dog in about five years because the last couple years of her life she couldnt really play hard any more. :-( The second dog was Scrabble - owned by Michaels partner in his Malinois kennel, Lisa Maze. He was a smaller Malinois and had a bit more frenzied energy - and not as calm on the bite as Pi. I think I lucked out once not getting bit when I should have! Lastly, I worked with Shrike, Pis brother. Michael got him out to show me the difference in energy because I was so enamored of Pis calmness. As calm as Pi was, thats how energized Shrike was. A scary dog! After playing a few minutes with him on a bite wedge (much larger than a tug and used to protect me from his powerhouse bite!), I was happy for Michael to save me and take over. Wow. He was too much dog for me! Here he is doing bitework (not what we did in class): youtube/watch?v=hAuFek8OqTY It was fun. Im a bit sore. It reminded me of how much I loved playing with Roxy and Maximo. I wish Quito would play! Ill have fun when Lucy gets a bit bigger. :-)
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 03:28:43 +0000
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