All this fun in the house and garden, how about a walk in the neighborhood, I hear you think. Well….. on occasion I managed to get their leads on them, however Pip would straight away pretend that she was a dead starfish and Marley would turn in this scared, angry and biting snapping turtle so chainmail was needed to take the lead off.
We organized doggy play dates with friendly and confident dogs. So we had Tinker and Alfie (2 gorgeous Tibetan Terriers, Cassie the wonderful and crazy Cocker Spaniel, and Mika another beautiful girl come over to play.
But this was not enough, Pip was still happy just hanging around in the house and our garden, Marley however was starting to show signs of boredom. And I was getting desperate to walk my dogs, what is the point of dogs that you can’t walk? We were approaching summer and I was adamant that we would be able to take them to the pub garden in the summer.
Help was needed! we hadn’t even managed to get to the pavement outside our house. Plan B take 2 other dogs to walk up and down your garden on their leads. Hoping that Pip and Marley would take the hint and found that they both were happy to try this game too.
Result! Marley was pretty good at the game, no more angry snapping turtle. Pip not so much still dealing with a floppy starfish, but with a little perseverance and lots of treats, we got there in the end. One week of practice in our back garden for 15 minutes everyday.
By Saturday I felt that we could up the game, and decided that we were going the front of our house. Marley didn’t need further practice and without a hitch walked a few laps around the grass verge, Pip not so much but managed one lap.
We were going to the Common, Cassie came along for moral support and Tinker and Alfie were the welcome committee, we managed about 30 minutes that day and we never looked back.
