Poor ole Samson has been a tad neglected in the way of long walks the past few days, because of my birthday and visitors. So today he ventured outside again. Should’ve seen the look on his face as soon as I mentioned the W.A.L.K. word! The biggest Mali grin I have ever seen, whimpering impatiently as we get the walking boots on.
A freezing morning, and because there has been a lot of rain there were massive iced over puddles. Sam’s never experienced this before, so we were interested to see how he would react. Some of the broken ice was carried around for a while before being licked away. A massive frozen puddle was the test, with Sam sliding across with a look of awe on his face. He then had a bash at biting and scraping his way through the ice. As soon as some broke away under his weight he had his teeth against the edges, breaking off more. We thought it was pretty amusing, seeing a Mali skidding across ice, trying to go fast, but instead sprawled all over the place!
We also had a bash at improving Samson’s recall. It was a bit hit and miss. We just kept calling him back for no real reason, and then tugged with him, a big “good boy for here, good boy!” and then letting him wander off again. The problem is that if he has something he likes more, like a massive bit of tree (yes, really, an entire branch which could be a tree in itself) or just a frisbee then the recall is 100% out of the window. I have a tree, I most certainly don’t need you, regardless of your treats or toys. That’s the problem we are having. I’m thinking of buying a 20m leed or something similar, so Sam can go on ahead, and then if he chooses to ignore our recall I can bring him back and praise. Hopefully it will work with persistance and a great deal of calm patience. It proves very hard to remain calm some times, especially when he comes so close and then looks you in the eye and buggers off again! But it has to be done, and right now the recall and retrieval are the top of my list. For example, today a family were walking through the common. Two toddlers were walking with their Mum, with a little yappy dog in front and off leed. I knew Samson would have the urge to play with the dog, both myself and Gregg know he likes a good rough up. So off he went. The dog didn’t worry me at all, Sam plays fine and will come away when asked. What worried me were the toddlers. I know he is fine with children, no aggression etc as we are lucky enough to live next to a five year old who Samson met as soon as we brought him home. The reason I was aware of potential problems is because Sam isn’t small and cute any more, he is big, fast and very strong. If he jumped on one of those kids they would’ve been floored, even if only for hundreds of slobbery kisses. However, he recalled fine, but I need to know I can trust the recall as explained in the previous post about the girls with footballs.
If it is icey again during a walk I shall take a video, it was worth a watch! As for the recall, we shall persist, and as always I will update on our progress.
