Sweet Sophie is coming right along. She still needs her leash but we are using her remote collar more and more. The only thing she still seems a little lost about is the Down command. She seems to understand the word but isn't sure how to get the answer right so she either feigns deafness or simply stares away from me hoping I will let her off the hook. We will continue working on it until she has more confidence with it.
She makes mistakes, of course, but she is getting cleaner and cleaner with her commands. I hope to be able to transition her to off-leash this weekend or early next week. She has also done pretty well with the chickens. She ignores the birds who are fat and lazy (and thus less interesting). I have a young hen who is pretty active still and so when she runs around playing it is difficult for Sophie not to chase but a tap from her remote collar reminds her to ignore them. I wouldn't trust her unsupervised yet but she is not determined to play with them which is very promising. Sophie's chasing instincts get woken up with my flighty hen runs around acting like a dog toy and we can't fault her for that.
Tomorrow we are spending the day at the farm working and playing on our long-line. The long-line is a 30 foot leash that lets us practice the Come command in a more realistic way without risking taking the leash off prematurely. So far so good for little Sophie.
She makes mistakes, of course, but she is getting cleaner and cleaner with her commands. I hope to be able to transition her to off-leash this weekend or early next week. She has also done pretty well with the chickens. She ignores the birds who are fat and lazy (and thus less interesting). I have a young hen who is pretty active still and so when she runs around playing it is difficult for Sophie not to chase but a tap from her remote collar reminds her to ignore them. I wouldn't trust her unsupervised yet but she is not determined to play with them which is very promising. Sophie's chasing instincts get woken up with my flighty hen runs around acting like a dog toy and we can't fault her for that.
Tomorrow we are spending the day at the farm working and playing on our long-line. The long-line is a 30 foot leash that lets us practice the Come command in a more realistic way without risking taking the leash off prematurely. So far so good for little Sophie.
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