Four paws on the floor seems to be key.
I am sure many of us have pets. Growing up, we always had a cat.
To me, cats are a great animal and pet. When they want attention, they come to you. When they don’t want attention, they do their own thing. What’s that old saying? Cats don’t have owners, they have servants?
So true.
Also, once a cat is house or litter box trained, they are pretty self reliant, as long as you give them food and water. That makes travel easier, too, as you can usually just get somebody to come and feed them once or twice a day and maybe play a bit with them for a few moments.
But then I got a dog.
Needless to say, training is a bit different for a dog than a cat. Also, it’s an ongoing thing. But the one thing I’m really working on?
Four paws on the floor.
Harper gets overly excited in many situations. At eight months old, she’s still a pup, so it’s understandable. But it gets hard to have her out for a walk when people go by us.
She wants to go to those people, she pulls and lunges and will sometimes get off the ground. And it’s not in an aggressive way, rather in a way that she is like “Hi! I’m Harper! Pet and play with me!”
Alas, she has to learn she can’t always get the attention. She needs to have a little bit of self control. We’re working on it the best we can.
She’s truly a smart dog. She has a lot of the basic commands down, and we’re working on things like her recall and such. But she is usually on a leash, unless she’s in a fenced area, or in a place it’s safe for her to be without. There aren’t many places like that. But we work on everything we can.
I have a book of 101 tricks I’ve been reading. There are some I think she’ll be able to do, and others I don’t want her to know for various reasons.
She will definitely have more things, though. And being treat motivated, we keep working and working
Jumping up, though, is coming along slowly.
So she will get there
Four paws and all.
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Four paws on the floor, yes please! I am petite, and it can get quite intimidating when big dogs jump me. Once I was wearing white pants, and this dog, literally just getting out of a muddy puddle couldn’t contain their joy to see me.
Not only was I really scared, he left his prints all over my thighs. The owner? “Don’t worry, he just wants to play”. I was livid. Very unprofessional.
That being said i like curious and somewhat mischievous dogs, and I talk to them as if they were buddies. My hairdresser has a beautiful black Lab. He’s not allowed to come out of his area in the back room, but sometimes he’ll sneak to the front, and we’ll play and pet for a while. Then I tell him to go back, I didn’t want him to get tin trouble with his “Mom”.