Old Dogs, New Tricks

At our recent housewarming party, Tazzy managed to win over everyone with her charm, good looks, and baby-sitting skills. She had three young children, who we were initially told were afraid of dogs, playing with her all night, she was super tolerant, and soaked up the attention, as well as the bounty of food they managed to drop for her. Even Dan's boss admited later that he is afraid of dogs, but thought she was simply wonderful. Tazzy then proceeded to provide some evening entertainment for everyone by showing off some of her tricks. Blaze accompanied her a little, but because of the number of people, and specifically, the number of scary little people known as children, he didn't get to stay out for most of the party.

As mentioned previously, the idea of training a dog is a bit novel here, so perhaps the crowd was easily swayed, but everyone seemed impressed by their little circus dog act. One women said to me " You must have trained them when they were very young, when they could learn so many things." She was suprised when I said that both of them were rescues that we adopted, and that we didn't think either of them had much training as puppies. She was even more surprised when I told her that they continue to learn new tricks all the time. The week before the party, they each learned a new trick. When I tell Tazzy "Shhh" she now lays on her side and puts her head all the way down, and on hearing "relax" Blaze lays down and rests his head either on the floor or on his paw. They love to learn, and mostly they are limited by my imagination trying to figure out what I should get them to do. But don't worry, I'll keep working on it.