Working out

Of late Trooper hasn’t been completely cooperative on our daily morning hikes around the Levy Senior Center indoor quadrangle (13 laps to the mile).

At about Lap 7 the last few days, he had started pulling back on the leash, looking up at me me in the eye as if to say “WTF we doing this for, anyway?” 

I have had to drag him along, coaxing him to heel at a reasonable pace.

So I Googled the problem (Google is always your friend).

Various dog trainers say that getting a young dog to heel involves letting him do what he wants occasionally, namely stopping to smell the, er, roses. To a dog, a good walk is a sashay through scents, not a 10,000-step Fitbit score.

And so I have taken to letting Trooper lead the way with his nose for one quadrangle leg out of four, and then, when turning the next corner, picking up the pace briskly, even seguing into a trot for the next three legs.

He likes that. He’s willing to hustle three boring legs in exchange for the reward of one long and leisurely sniffing stretch.

Dog-and-Handler Shrinkology 101.