Halo is obviously getting more comfortable in her new home, and is feeling confident enough to explore. She can now go up and down the stairs to the second floor of my house without hesitating. :) She doesn't feel the need to be in the same room with me all of the time...but every good thing has its difficulties...
Words of the weekend: "Leave it!" This is the command for letting something alone. She can follow that command perfectly during our practice sessions when I have a bit of food or a treat in my closed fist in front of her. I just say, "Leave it," and she backs away from it (and then I give the food to her as a reward). The practical application of this command is proving to be more of a challenge!
Halo was particularly wound up around 8:00 pm last night! She ran upstairs, where she likes to ruffle the bathmats in the bathroom. Realizing she had gone upstairs, I squelched that idea pretty quickly by calling her back down the stairs and redirecting (the fancy word for distracting) her with a holey ball. Which lasted for 1.2 minutes. When I looked back up, she was peeing on the dog bed. Mind you, she had just been outside about 5 minutes before and didn't get busy. OK, took her outside to reinforce that we get busy outside, cleaned up the pee while fake-angrily muttering about having to do so. Now where was she???? In the kitchen, playing in the water from Harley's bowl. Halo just LOVES water. She uses her paws to splash it out of the water bowl all over the floor, and then lays in it. I gave the command to leave it as she returned to the bowl for more splashing. Cleaned that up, brought her back to living room, "redirected" with nylabone.
I sat down to play Bejeweled Blitz while she gnawed away. Mind you, Bejeweled Blitz is a one-minute game. Finished the game, Halo wasn't playing with the bone anymore. Now she was hiding under the table pooping. Yep, we just went outside, she didn't get busy, and now she's done it in the house. Back outside, back inside, cleaned up poop while muttering about the nuisance, redirected with bone...and she started chewing the corner of the dog bed. "Leave it" (which she did) as I gave her a hard rubber squeaky toy that she likes. I sat down, glance at tv, gave up on Bejeweled Blitz with Halo being so hyper...she's gone again. In the kitchen. Chewing papers (that luckily I don't need) that she pulled out of a book bag she has never even noticed before. "Leave it." She didn't want to...she'd rather chew the paper. I pried it out of her mouth, praised her good "leave it" even though she had no choice. Back to living room. She ran back to kitchen. That's it!!! It was 8:30 on a busy Saturday and I was tired.
I grabbed an 8-foot length of cotton rope with a slide hook attached. Hooked her to it and created a slip knot that went around my ankle. Ha. Mom always wins! Once tethered to me, she laid right down next to me and fell asleep. I tried to play a couple of games of Bejeweled Blitz in my new-found peace and quiet. But I was too tired.
I had to "leave it."
We used to have to take Haylie out for near 30 minutes at a time. Even in the rain, I would not bring her back inside until she "got busy." It was always up to her how long we stayed out.
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