Yeah, we’re ahead of schedule and already there – the boys are fully trained and can now spend time outside by themselves. And they love it!
According to the Invisible Fence Trainer’s advice we should still be letting them drag the leashes around, which we started on Sunday, but they wouldn’t move. It could be that we only have one regular leash and the rest are retractables, or just that our dogs are strange… Who knows?
But we were going to be outside anyway, so we let them off the leashes, they played for about two hours and then all three stood patiently waiting on the porch for me to be ready to go inside, so I took them in. Since then we’d been letting them out for ten minutes or so at a time, with someone out there. But yesterday, it was bitterly cold, I took then out in the morning and they wouldn’t come to me. They were too busy playing down below the garage, so I stepped inside and Lewy came a running. He wasn’t in two minutes before he was whining to go back out with the other two, so I let him back out. I watched from the kitchen window while they played. They stayed out about half an hour and then came to the porch waiting to be let in. Although it did sound like a herd of elephants on the back porch.
They love it, and now spend about a half an hour running free a few times a day! They haven’t “marked” their territory in the house since they’ve been off their leashes – saving us hours of clean-up time, and no more running full speed ahead in the house knocking things over.
They even listen better! I have to say how much more enjoyable they are now that they aren’t quite so much work, and quite so bored. Bored dogs are hard to handle!
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Haley, I’m so glad you can send the dogs out on their own. The next thing you need is a dog door. It has saved me from getting up and letting them out every 30 min. The pictures of the kids look wonderful, if you haven’t heard, I,m still waiting for their school pictures so I can hang them up on my family wall. If it is possible, could you send 5×7′s I’ll gladly pay for them.
Love,
I have the pictures – I’ll get them in the mail to you soon!
I’m so glad we can just let the dogs out too! But out here doggy doors are out of the question! We’d have raccoons and any other animal wandering in, it’s not like in town.