Various, including a Buttercup Update

The best Christmas Elf ever — Miss Maddie from the F Litter celebrating her 13th Christmas.

Isn’t that so wonderful?! Merry Christmas Team Maddie!

Zeus from the Wildflowers (K Litter) lives relatively close to Maddie, and recently had quite a bit of fun with the Washington SNOW…

Thank you to Penny for keeping me in photos of that darling boy.

This is turning into a Washington-centric post and I have no complaints about that. Living in the same general vicinity is Buttercup and thanks to Georgia, the quick answer to What’s Up, Buttercup? is A LOT!

Prepare to be inspired or to feel like a Slacker (or both) — here is their wonderful report:

“Buttercup earned her third title last week. This one was an Intermediate Tricks title. For her ten tricks we chose: Catch (treat), Close door, close drawer, Fetch (>20 ft.), Game (dog manipulates interactive canine game to get treat), Go to your place (to bed/mat, crate from 10 ft.), Push button (on sound toy etc.), Ring bell, Sit pretty (sit w/ head tilted), Shake, and Which hand. She has mastered nearly all of the ten additional tricks needed for her Advanced Tricks title which we will be getting soon. Some of the next batch of tricks include, Identify a toy by name (out of three), Circle left and right, and Cover-up with a blanket.

I've always said that it doesn't matter what you teach your dog to do, whether it's tricks, obedience, agility, scent work or all of the above :-) You are creating a vocabulary with your dog and facilitating communication across the species. It's pretty amazing that Buttercup knows scores of words in a different species' language! Think about it...Do you know any words in any other species' language? Squirrel? Dolphin? Whale??? (they've been studying whale vocalization for decades but I doubt they can string a whale sentence together.) I understand just one phrase in a different species' language (actually I'd bet that I'd know it in EVERY species' language) and that's "Get out of here!!" (--think cat hissing or dog growling). Our dog's ability to comprehend us is astounding.

We practice scent work a lot. I love it. Buttercup does too. She's done every element: interior, exterior, container, buried, water, and vehicle. Here's a video of Buttercup doing a container search the day after I introduced her to odor. She's five months old here and her scent puzzle-solving continues to improve every day.

Today I laid a track for one of my tracking students and she laid a track for Buttercup. Tracking is the perfect pandemic social distance sport (it's outside and I'm 30 feet away). Buttercup did well. She has a very definite article indication when she tracks. She bonks it hard with her nose and then quickly lays down. We call it "Touchdown!!". (Buttercup likes 'touch' better than anything!) My cue for the behavior (before it became automatic) was to put both my arms straight up in the air and yell "Touchdown!". Ha! More on "Touch"...

Touch (hand targeting with a nose touch) was the first behavior that I taught to Buttercup. With all the other dogs that I have owned, the first behavior that I taught was to sit, but Buttercup came preloaded with sitting on cue (Thank you Mary-Ann! She also never jumped on people because sitting was the preferred behavior upon greeting). The 'touch' cue is great for teaching lots of other behaviors. We got a dog doorbell that Buttercup rings with her nose. She likes it so much that she'll bark to go out the door in order to immediately ring the doorbell to be let back in. She also will do a couple quick pokes to get your attention :-) Those times when Buttercup doesn't come when called can be overcome by holding out my hand and saying "Touch!" and because Touch has been classically conditioned for Buttercup, she can't help herself, she-must-touch-the-hand. The other night Patty and I were playing Yahtzee and we were having Buttercup 'kiss' the dice (it works!) and pretty soon everything was covered in saliva. Pavlov was right!!

I was trying for a group photo in front of the Berner Christmas decoration but Buttercup wouldn't oblige me. She reminds me of that kid in school that wants to be a clown in the class photo. She'd nailed the impersonation of the Christmas Berner, though, while the other two sat politely.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and I, for one, am ready to kiss 2020 goodbye with a heartfelt "Happy New Year!" from Georgia, Patty and Buttercup.”

THANK YOU to Team Buttercup for the wonderful and instructive update. SO appreciated. It is hard to believe those Wildflowers are going to be seven months in just two days.

We received this ornament and think it sums things up nicely…