A New "Find"

Well, Dakota was back to work today, the day after Christ-
mas! Of course, since work is one of his favorite things, he didn't mind.

Today's walk was at the Texas State Capitol building. This is a great place to practice Dakota's "finds," where he leads me to certain objects on command (trash can, elevator, and seat, to name a few). On my agenda for today was to teach Dakota the new "find," "find the girls." This is the command for finding the ladies' restroom.

We warmed up with some obedience work, practiced on stairs, and did a few "finds" that he already knows. There were quite a few tourists today and plenty of distractions, but for the most part he settled in and did his work well in spite of it all.

To teach his new find, I took him to within a few feet of the ladies' room, told him, "Find the girls!," walked him to the restroom door, praised him and gave him a treat. He gave me a happy look of, "Oh! Is that all you want?" Of course part of the lesson is that each time we must actually go inside and use the facilities. After that, we repeated the process on the next floor. I stood within sight of the ladies' room, gave him his command, and his tail just went to wagging as he proudly took me straight to the door. He seemed to understand just what I wanted. The Capitol has restrooms on every level so we got lots of practice. I wonder if some of the tourists thought I had incontinence issues? I'll admit it was a bit embarrassing but hey, I was too proud of him to care much.

After all that work, it was time for some fun. Dog park here we come!

Just to add a little extra excitement to our day, Duckie had to throw up in the car on the way home. Don't worry, he's not really sick -- just drank lots of water at the dog park, and that combined with the running around was a little much for him. He's all back to normal and snoozing happily at my feet!