Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Learning and Personalities

I have heard it said that dogs typically don't learn by example (ie showing them what you want them to do). Rather they learn best by positive reenforcement of behavior that you catch them doing. In training I believe this is largely true however I suspect that a new dog may follow the lead of a more experienced dog.

Meet Warrior

Warrior is a member of our little greyhound/dog-park group. For some reason I am having some resistance to calling it a play-date group. Probably it is a man thing. I digress. Warrior came to stay with us for a few days. He is a very affectionate boy who gets a little excited when you arrive and depart so you have to watch his whipping tail. Warrior doesn't have that much experience on hard floors. This combined with his excitable nature made him cautious navigating our house at first.

One of his challenges seemed to be our stairs. We have two sets of stairs. They both look pretty daunting from the all fours looking down perspective. Warrior was hesitant to travel down and seemed trapped forever. Gentle verbal encouragement from me did little. Kassa, realizing his partner in slumber had not yet joined him, returned to the base of the steps. After discovering Warriors dilemma Kassa returned up the steps, turned 180 on the top step right in front of Warrior and returned down. This was all the encouragement Warrior needed and he tentatively came right down. We repeated this process going down stairs into the garage.

We saw a few other examples of Kassa showing Warrior the ropes of the house. Although when it came to sitting for treats Warrior at first was somewhat directionally challenged :)

Warrior has quickly worked his way into our hearts and now our extended pack. We will miss him when he returns to his folks tonight.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Top Ten are in.

Well unfortunately Kassa and I didn't make it to the top ten. In Hound-sight I think that the other contestants deserved to get more points under the rules that were posted. WagWorld just forgot the golden rule that Greyhounds are God's gift to man and therefore they should win any contest they are entered in by default.

The first 10000 people to vote get a free toy. So stop on by and see if they have any left. I have chosen to endorse FINALIST: Pat McNeely & Koda. (Maybe he will pick Kassa has his VP running mate.. ha ha). Anyway regardless of the rules of the contest, I just like Pat's dog and the relationship he presents. The dog park he was at looks like it could use a real face lift.

Here were the judging criteria of the contest:

(#1) Creativity of the idea(s) to enhance your daily adventure with your dog at your neighborhood dog park (60%); (#2) Feasibility of bringing the idea to life (20%); and (#3) Effectively demonstrates how life is better together with your dog (20%).

Thanks for everyone's encouragement and thanks to Beneful and Wagworld for throwing this contest. Hopefully we will have another opportunity to try again next year!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Today is the day.. or maybe tomorrow ;)

July 14th is the day that the dog park contest should announce the Top 10 Videos.
Well the official rules say "The ten Finalist videos will be revealed on the Beneful WagWorld Web Site on or about July 14, 2010".
So I'm going to be hitting REFRESH on my browser about 7000 times today. If we make the top 10 then get ready to VOTE for John Pepper and Kassa! dreamdogpark.wagworld.com



Later.. off to start hitting refresh...

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Trip to Canada

We when on a trip to Canada a few weekends a go and opted to have Kassa stay with one of his buddies named Warrior. This was the first time that Kassa was going to be away from both of us since we got him. I think he handled it like a pro over all. We sure missed him though.. When we got back Kassa was happy to see us.. but I think he may miss his buddy Warrior a bit. Unfortunately he also got a cut on his leg his first day back so that has limited our dog park time because he keeps re-opening the cut. We are sticking to walks and sleep until he is back to 100 percent.