Beginnings of a Duck Dog
Simon with the ducks was *highly* entertaining. For the first half of the lesson I moved the ducks around the duck arena and happened to have a 65lbs dog on a lead. I, by the way was a great duck dog. I got all the obstacles in the AKC arena and put my group back together a few times.
The hard part about Simon is that he knows what an arena is and there are fun things in there.
I think he was a little disappointed to find there was nothing in there except ducks, which he’s not been allowed to interact with in the past. So he spent a lot of time sniffing around the fence, attempting to mark and even ate a piece of poop. He was generally confused. After watching that for about 10 minutes Chris decided to put him in the Take Pen with the ducks to develop interest. Same rules as any other time you’re in a small pen, you are center and keep the dog to the edges and change direction occasionally.
After that, he was pretty well on. I had to summon my inner Ron as he instilled most of Si’s commands. it was really hard to balance between keeping him interested in the ducks and continually instilling in him that he needs to pace and keep his distance using his liedown.
sometimes i left a little too much room, but where he had enough line he’d regroup the ducks which was neat.
All in all we spent about an hour messing around with 2 different sets of ducks. Taking a break to make multiple sessions of course. Poor ducks.He did a great job. There were a few small squishes, but not as many as i was expecting.
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