So, being Saturday and all, both of my people were home today and spent a lot of time with us pups. They are working hard to get me to associate playing fetch with tugging. In flyball, it's really good if we have something like a tug to run back to. My buddy Renzo will only run for food--that's fine too, but our team captains say that dogs run harder for tugs. I love to tug as a general thing, but I don't really see what it has to do with flyball, so I"m kind of disdainful of it when it shows up while I'm practicing.

When my person tries to get me tug before she will throw the ball, I usually just look at her patiently and eventually, I just walk away (she tries *really* hard not to give in and throw the ball anyway, but I put her in a kind of a bind--cause it's also not so good for me to decide when it's time to stop playing--something about getting a big head. Whatever, people are kind of weird.

The real thing I've been learning today, though is "be nice". See, I get a little persnickety when other dogs get too close. It's not all that predictable...for my person anyway and she doesn't really ask me what's the trigger, I'm not telling. In any case, the people don't like it, so today we've been working on "be nice"--which basically seems to mean, stop snarling and look at person. When I do that--bingo, a treat. Yay.

And that means today's lesson is:
Be nice, then you get a treat and keep everybody else from snarling