I’ve been meaning to write about training Juno for a while now, but never got around to it. To make a long story short, Juno wouldn’t win any obedience contests, but she is much better behaved than before. Lately, however, she’s picked up some cute-but-annoying new habits. For instance, she used to be perfectly happy to go out for a walk with either Shashwati or myself, but now she wants everyone to be together. If one of us goes to take her out, she’ll run into the room where the other one is working and dance around. Often she’ll pick up something in her mouth, like one of our slippers, and poke us with it as she dances in an effort to herd us to the door. The best way to deal with this is to put the leash away and pretend that the walk is over, trying again a while later. Unfortunately, sometimes we are in a rush, so whomever wants to stay behind has to walk to the door and pretend to go out, thus reinforcing the dog’s behavior.
The problem is, the dog has nothing to think about all day except training humans, while we have only a little time each day to spend training the dog. Guess who wins?
