I suppose being persistent is a good thing, but I would have to say that it should be tempered with a little common sense.

Finally–after TWO HOURS of walking–I gave up and walked back to the path I came in on… and couldn’t find that path either. I nearly cried from sheer joy when I saw a woman throwing a ball for her two dogs. But then she vanished and I couldn’t find HER path either.

Elly saved the day. She looked back at me, and then RAN up one path. Damned if the girl wasn’t right. It still took another fifteen minutes of creating a path through waist-high grass (thankfully NOT blackberries) to get back to the right path. Fortunately at that point I could see where the path was going to be–because I could see the enormous towers holding the high tension electricity wires. Hard to miss those.

So THREE HOURS (well… 2 hours and 48 minutes) late I got back to the car. About a hundred yards from the car I put the girls back on leash.

Now, when Elly was a puppy, people kept telling me that the key to having Elly not pull on leash was to tire her out first. Before today I never managed to tire her out that much. She walked those hundred yards so nicely, with a nice slack leash, that it was like a different dog.

Not a method I plan to use often.

They splashed in the muddy puddles. They ran some more, sliding in the mud.Lots of mud.

They were filthy messes by the time we were done. I took them to Hair of the Dog–a Portland grooming salon with self-serve baths too–and gave them baths. I brought them home and they could not wait for their lunch. They kept yelling at me: “when is it going to be ready! add some ice cubes so it cools faster! do something! what do you mean “sit”? I have no idea what you want!” While they were waiting, I got a handful of liver treats and had them do fast sits and downs. After a few repeats, you could HEAR their elbows hit the ground on the down. They were ravenous. Once their lunch cooled enough and I put it down, it was seconds before it was gone.

Then they fell deeply asleep, curled in little puppy balls. Like children, poodles are cute when they sleep. This is a very very good thing.

Thanks, Amy.

She looked unusually pleased with herself.

This is what her face looked like after I got her back to the car.

I really couldn’t stand it, though. She was talking about how she needed to put a little more weight on her already overweight lab. So I told her I thought the dog needed to lose about five pounds, if not ten. She told me how the parents (whom she hadn’t met) weighed eighty pounds and her dog was only 70. “And the vet says he’s fine.”

For brain exercise, I like to make sure that they train for five to ten minutes several times a day. By training, I mean agility training (which we do twice a week, formally), recall training, sit/down/stay/wait training, and so on. Of course, dogs are being trained 24/7 when they live with you, but I’m talking about how often I get out the treats and the clicker.

For physical exercise, I find it is essential for my girls to get an hour to an hour and a half off-leash racing and chasing (not just in the back yard) at the dog park four or five times a week. This keeps their muscles hard and their weight down. While we’re there, I walk so that the dogs keep moving as well. I find if I just stand around that the dogs just stand around or lie around, too. I probably cover about 2 miles at this point; it was more before my surgery, but I’m getting better steadily.

Besides the puppy park walks, we do the agility training twice a week, which requires them to work hard and sprint hard for about 25 minutes per session, besides the brain work of figuring out what I want.

In my experience, because poodles are content to sit on the couch and watch TV–anything to be with their moms–their owners assume that they don’t need as much exercise as a lab or a border collie. It’s not true. While poodles don’t seem to get fat like labs, they certainly do get soft and out of shape.

I took both curly girls to the puppy park this AM and met their friend Raven and my friend Diane. While Raven and Dancer did a lot of racing and chasing, Diane and I walked twice around Marymoor in an hour and a half; before the chondrosarcoma surgery, I could have easily done 3 times around in the same time, but this is the first time I’ve done twice since the surgery, so BIG DEAL. (Whine alert: my knee REALLY hurts now. Oh well. Rest and ice for the rest of the day. Whoops! another pun. Sorry.)

Anyway, last night’s aggressive heeling lesson seems to have sunk in slightly. I just took Elly out… and didn’t have to turn around even once. She didn’t pull. Of course, she’d just had a large lunch after a long romp at the puppy park, so she was very tired, but still.

Yesterday Dancer stepped on one side of a piece of cardboard and then leapt back when it moved. Wow, she’s nervous about motion under her feet. That’s undoubtedly the source of her anxiety about the teeter–now, how do we train away that anxiety? I’m going to continue with the rocker board, but I’m trying to come up with some other sources of motion in her life.

It was cold at the seminar, so I had pulled out all my various knitted hats. It was also dirty, so when it was over, I washed them and left them on towels on the kitchen counter to dry. One is now missing, which means Dancer probably took it somewhere to play with… but I can’t find it. I find myself wondering if she might have eaten it. However, everything is going in and out normally, so…

Yesterday at the dog park, the two curly girlies were playing with an unneutered pitbull mix. Nice dog, actually, despite all the cliches. I didn’t have the nerve to ask why he was still unneutered. The funny part was that Dancer went into her “I am going to herd you” state of mind, chasing this dog to run faster and snapping at his rear–and the owners got nervous and left the park. They even said something about how big Dancer’s teeth are.