Today's Sunshine

Monster had a lot of focus outside today. I placed him in a stay and wandered off and hid a toy somewhere in the garden. In spite of him nearly vibrating with excitement, he stayed in place every time. I wandered out of sight, came back, disappeared again, showed him the toy, etc. The longest stay was a little over three minutes, and he didn't budge. When I returned I praised him, petted him and talked to him, and he stayed through that too, waiting desperately for me to say...

-Where's the frisbee!?

Wooohooo!

(Monster works buck nekkid in the garden of course, I just don't have a lot of photos of him at full speed - cameras risk going airborne - so I'm using what I've got. Deal with it.)

Hiding toys in the garden is of course not track work, since a scent trail needs time to sink. Instead he uses air scenting for the toy (as opposed to checking where I went). It's great fun to watch him search. He'll always head first to the last place he saw me holding the toy (I usually pretend to hide it somewhere within sight, but tuck it away in a pocket or up a sleeve instead), but when it's not there he doesn't get stuck. Instead he'll begin the search in earnest, working the wind from different angles, climbing up trees to check, making big loops around the perimeter to pick it up and close in. While he's searching I remain quite passive, although I do tend to sneak after him a little around corners and bushes so I can watch. When he finds the toy he'll come racing back to me so we can have a reward tug of war.

He really loves it, and I try to make sure to vary the difficulty so sometimes he'll find it easily and sometimes he'll really have to work for it. I wish we could do it other places too, since he knows all the tricks in the garden pretty well by now... Maybe one day.

What "maybe"? Quit whining and get to work!