Short: Discovery Park's allure

Pooka could spend an entire hour sniff sniff sniffing through the grassy field of Discovery Park's south bluff. She hounds along until she finds an interesting scent, then:

Pause.

Sniff.

SNIFFSNIFFSNIFF.

(Ears up, pounces nose first into tuft of tall grass.)

Pause. Sniff.

(Pulls head up dramatically. Sniffs. Repeat.)

Must be the bunnies.

Ew.

So Pooka and I just wandered down to the schoolyard with the hope that she'd find someone other than me to wrestle with.

The field was emtpy. But wait! A nice-looking man in nice-looking clothes with his nice-looking black lab waltzed in. Hello, Maestro.

It went downhill fast. He is one of those "show your dominance" dads, and I bet you can guess how well that goes over with Pooka. She barked, growled, threw her hackles up, and dodged his overly stern efforts. At first I was scared she'd attack him or something equally horrific, but when I realized he wasn't provoking violence, I had a hard time not laughing as he tried to impose his weird macho mean will on Pooka, and she persisted in ignoring his loud sit and drop-it commands.

Unfortunately, she was also ignoring me, so I didn't have much opportunity to show him how generally well-behaved she is. Could be because she was too focused on keeping 8 feet between her and machoman, or because she hasn't eaten in 24 hours (the post-diarrhea fast we're about to break). Half felt like I should explain her bratty behavior, half wanted to get as far away from him as quickly as possible. Just: ew.

Rewarded behavior is repeated

With the big madness of Pooka's accident behind us, what is left for me to do but sweat the small stuff? Such as, why is this dog so itchy? How am I going to keep her from breaking another (yes, another) window? Is she ever going to ditch the little twist in her left hind knee when she walks?  Is she going to hurt herself dragging my sharp knives out of the kitchen sink? Is the landlord-barking getting worse? And why is this dog so itchy?

I've been most irritated by a new walking habit of hers -- slipping behind me as we walk so she can sniff the hedges and grasses on my other side, then outpacing me so the leash is wrapped around my back. I don't know why exactly, but it's been driving me absolutely bonkers.

Time spent working on clicker training with the pups at the Seattle Humane Society reminded me how magical it seems. Click, treat: the dogs get it. Ace the springing terrier, whose default behavior is to endlessly jump head high in his kennel, gets it when he sits, I click and treat. (When he's overly excited, which is often, he still dissolves into jumping fits -- but you can tell he's thinking about sitting.)

So tonight I brought the clicker on our late-evening walk. When Pooka zipped around to my left side, I stopped and maneuvered so that she was headed back into position. Click. Treat. Bingo. Helps that she hadn't had dinner yet, of course. But within a few blocks she was responding to "right side!" when I called it out. When I didn't, but she ducked behind, she was quick to return to the right spot and looked at me, expectant, every time.

One other tidbit for the record. Tonight when I came home and was puttering around, I called out to Pooka, "where's your ball?" She got her ball, but when she lost interest in it, I switched to "Pooka where's your squeaky?" Referring, of course, to the ever-rattier tail-less squeaky squirrel. Girl went and got it first try.