Training Skye

    I guess it is becoming pretty evident by the number of blogs I am writing about our new dog, that she has pretty much taken over our lives.  She has become our main focus as we introduce her to our routines and she has adapted to them really well.

    There was one thing that we have been remiss in teaching her and that is staying by herself in the house.  Since we got her, one of us has pretty much always been around to keep her company.  We recognized that  it is an essential lesson for to her to stay alone in the house with Lucifer, our scary cat, because we can’t always take her everywhere we go.

    One day, Joan and I purposely left her in the house while we spent 20 minutes walking the trail.  We were happy to discover upon our return, that the house was still standing, and both of our pets were still inside, unharmed. 

    Despite this successful experiment, Joan still suffered from “Separation Anxiety” (a condition that usually effects the dog, not the owner), and a couple of times has opted for sitting at home with the dog, instead of going to square dancing.  We both knew we had to be more hardcore about leaving the dog alone and so we made a plan.

    We decided that Sunday night, we would treat ourselves and go out to eat at “Morels” McBride’s best restaurant.  Eating out is something we rarely do, so we were both looking forward to it.  Because we both really like to eat, we generally have our evening meal really early, at 4:00, but Morels doesn’t start its evening menu until 5:00, so it meant we had to endure an hour of hunger until we could drive to McBride and have our meal.

    Finally, at 4:50, the time finally arrived when we could head out for the restaurant.  Skye looked up at us with her big sad eyes, but we gritted our teeth, and told her, “Stay” in a firm voice.  We shut the door, got into the car, and headed out into the dark night of rain/snow to Morels.  After the 10 minute drive we arrived at our destination only to discover that Morels was closed on Sunday nights, so we shrugged our shoulders, turned around, and drive back home.

    Skye was happy to see us again after our 20 minute absence.  It wasn’t much of a test for her, but again nothing seemed to have happened while we were away.  I guess the next longer lesson will have to be put off until another day.

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