Late Summer Adventures
Over the summer, the bulk of my referrals for dog training were for dogs whose problems stemmed from a lack of socialization.
So I’ve redoubled my efforts to give Killian a huge range of positive experiences while he’s still in that key window of puppyhood, as a way of following my own advice and getting out ahead of those potential issues.
This weekend, we took two long walks in a large local preserve as part of giving him a chance to get some off-leash exercise as well as a whole variety of sights, sounds, smells, and surfaces.
And, because it’s a relatively large area that covers a number of habitats, including the upper section of a tidal river, fields, and woods, the birding is often spectacular. Although Red-eyed Vireos are a relatively common summer bird in New England, I’ve never positively IDed one before, so this picture actually puts this bird on my life list for the first time.
A lucky moment for me and the Vireo, but not so much for the caterpillar. This photo is time stamped approximately one second after the preceding one, and if you look above, you can actually see the hapless lepidopteran larva just before the Vireo strikes.
Killian was wonderfully patient with me, poking around in the general area while I stalked the birds. And of course, the walks were more about him than they were about my camera or the birds.
He got the chance to practice his recalls and walking nicely next to me, and at fifteen weeks, he’s just hitting the developmental stage where he has enough attention to really follow through on those skills cleanly, so we had a great time practicing training.
As a side note, I’ve been training Killian with kibble on these outings, which I haven’t typically done in the past with our puppies. Killian’s not the biggest chowhound Golden I’ve ever seen, but he’s perfectly happy to munch a few kibbles out of my hand as a reward. So instead of feeding him lunch all at once in his bowl on these big adventure days, I measure out his lunch meal in a baggie and feed it to him over the course of the late morning through the early afternoon for good behaviors, like coming when called, walking nicely next to me, and settling down when we’re hanging out on a town green, waiting for passers by who want to say hello to him.
We ended both of these weekend adventure days by hanging out on the dock with the dogs. Part of what we do with three dogs of such different ages is rotate them through sometimes. So after Killian had his big adventure, he got a nap, and Comet got some well-earned time to sleep in the sun on the dock.
Murphy also got a couple of big rounds of dock jumping for tennis balls on both Saturday and Sunday, but I didn’t get a great shot of that.
Also during dock time this weekend, I managed to grab this decent photo of a male Belted Kingfisher as he stopped in the tree above us to eat his meal.
I had the good camera in my hands when the Kingfisher stopped by because I was trying to capture Andy and Killian on the paddleboard, and I couldn’t be happier with this photo or the two boys pictured in it.
Of course, when they came back to the dock, Killian attempted to jump back up on his own and misjudged both the distance and the fact that the board would kick back under him as he leapt. So he landed just off the dock and dunked himself for about a half a second before I fished him out.
So he gave us a laugh to cap off a weekend of adventures. You can’t ask for much more than that.