Pepper and football…

Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 12:16 pm

Lately we did not take Pepper’s pulling seriously, so Pepper’s pulling on the leash is getting worse. We decided to tackle this problem now. It is better to do in summer when leaving the house is not as a big deal as in winter. By which I mean no hat, no boots, no gloves and no 3-4 layers of clothes. So we started from getting out of the house. Normally Pepper would stand up and ready to take off when we touched the door handle. What we tried to train him is he has to be calm and let us go out of the door before he could follow. On the first day, I had to close the door about 3-4 times before he got the idea. Sometimes he sat quite close to the door and when I tried to open the door wider it would hit him if he did not move. So he tried to move without lifting his butt off the ground. When we were outside, every time he tried to be ahead of me, I turned back towards the house and we started off again. I found that he started to understand things quicker than he was before. He walked brilliantly with me to the wood. Then I let him off to do his business and once he finished I called him to walk beside me off the leash. When he tried to be ahead of me, I turned and said “go home”. He turned and followed me towards home. Then I stopped and turned, he would sit next to me and look at me. Then we started walking again with him on my side. He tried so hard to maintain the distance between us. I feel much more in control.

Pepper is very trendy dog. It is world cup season and he decided to play with football instead of Frisbee. He never liked to play with football before. When he met Sophie and Daniel in April, Daniel played football with his dad in the football field. Pepper did not go for it. He played with the Frisbee with Sophie all the time. It started about two weeks ago when there was a football had been left in the football field. We played with him and left the football where it was hoping no one could see. We could only play for two days before someone noticed it and took it away. Yesterday I met Jonny, Charlotte’s youngest son. I asked him if he has any old football that he is no longer play with. He said he has a lot and gave me one. Pepper loves it so much. Now the Frisbee means nothing to him at the moment. Pepper could put his teeth into this football without bursting it but he could not drop it by himself.

It was sunny and warm so I let Pepper sat in the garden with me. He chewed his rawhide and I read my book. It was very good that he could settle in the garden with me.