Perrin is enjoying his life as a farm dog at the moment. We have been working on bits and pieces everyday, but I haven’t been documenting lately. I figured I would post some thoughts I wrote a while ago but hadn’t gotten around to posting.
Once I dove into the world of behaviour theory and training, then saw how much Perrin and I love training, my training list suddenly became very long! I want to figure out how to train THAT, and THIS, and ooh, THAT too! I very quickly had a list of behaviours to train that was longer than my arm. And while I could still use some more focus and priorities when it comes to that list (I am very guilty of flitting from one thing to another), there have been many things that have naturally fallen to the bottom of the list.
One of the items that has fallen to the bottom of that list is skijoring. It was something I wanted to try with Perrin since he was little, so when he was the right age I bought the equipment and started desensitizing him to the harness and introducing him to pulling. He took to pulling in no time, loving both his cart in the summer and the toboggan in the winter. Here Perrin is with his home made cart:
This winter, I felt like he understood pulling well enough to try him out on the trails. And he bombed!
When in the woods, Perrin likes to noodle about and sniff EVERYTHING. This was not terribly conducive to pulling straight ahead of me, and led to many line tangles, me falling down and much cursing. It sucked the joy out of both skiing, and being with my dog so I ultimately just let him run beside me on leash. He happily trotted beside me, but at no time did he want to line out and lead.
Many people at the ski club who skijor were saddened by my news that Perrin didn’t naturally take to skijoring (who has heard of a dog who doesn’t want to pull?!?!). “Can you train it?” They asked. I’m sure that I could! In fact, I have several half baked training plans in my head to do just that.
But you know what?
While I could train him to lead out and run ahead of me, it would take a considerable amount of time for something that is just not important to us. We have found that we both have a much better time when we ski un-attached. He can sniff around and keep up to me, I can ski unhindered and we can both enjoy our time together out in the woods. I have other things to train, and there are lots of things that Perrin actually enjoys. So we move on to other goals, while enjoying skiing together but unattached, and that is just fine with me!
Adventures in Dog Training 