Mom was clicking and treating me sometimes after I came out of the water. I'm not sure what she was driving at, but hey, the biscuits were great. Sometimes she seemed to be "herding" me away from the beach blanket (haha, she wants to be a Border Collie). She didn't want me to shake off there. So then I would go roll in the sand instead.
When we got home, Mom showered. She called me and then she came looking for me. She found me lying on my loveseat, NOT looking at a big pool of saltwater with biscuit bits dribbling across the floor. Don't know where that came from! Whoever did that, I'm sure glad they didn't barf it up in Mom's car on the way home. I hoped that she would forget about my shower by the time she finished cleaning up. But when she finished, she took my collar off, and I knew I wasn't off the hook.
Now I smell like shampoo, instead of like the ocean. All those perfectly good sand baths, down the shower drain.
Emma was certainly being a little thick at the beach. Finally, after four summers of seeing her happily gallop over to my beach blanket to shake off after each dip in the ocean, I have decided to put "shake off" on cue.
I'm using a combo verbal/hand signal cue. I waited to capture each spontaneous shake-off with a c/t, and a couple of times actually caught her shaking-off away from the blanket. I did in fact try to block her path to the blanket several times, and when I did that, she would either give up and not shake-off, or she would indulge in a sand bath instead.
What on earth goes through their heads??? So many dogs do that; wait until they are right next to people, or their things to shake off.
Eventually, I just gave up and started capturing shake-offs at the blanket. She happily snarfed down biscuits, but she never made the connection. It will take more sessions, but the weather has turned cooler. I don't know how many more beach days we will have this year.
Emma's 2lggd mom
Kathy
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