Donna loves walks.

Most days, she is able to sit calmly so we can put the leash on her.

Some days, she is fidgety and can barely contain herself.

And then there are some other days when she is so happy, its almost as if she will explode with joy. She zooms here and there. She stops to wrestle with her toy. Then she zooms back and loops around you before she sits. She sits for a bit but when her collar comes close to her head, she shifts forward in her eagerness until the collar is at the back of her head rather than around her neck. And then she is off on her feet looping around again.

You give up and walk away since there is no putting the collar on her in that state. Then she suddenly discovers newly grown ears to hear with and goes to her bed as you tell her to.

See me! See me all nice and calm now.

We are not fooled Donna, not when your little flicking tip of the tail is giving you away!

But yes, let’s go! You see the ex-rug flying from under her feet as she bursts off like a runner doing the 100m dash at the gunshot. My, my…

Yup, we spent the first couple of months trying to instill some level of discipline and calmness in the dog. Starting from the basic sitting still so that the collar and leash goes on to not rushing out the door when the door swings open. But she’s not a robot so there are days she does these random spurts of high-energy doggy antics which can be amusing in small doses.

You know how we use keywords when it comes to dog training. “Let’s go” is one of them I repeat frequently with Donna. So frequently that I start to use it even when I don’t mean her, for example when Mr P and I are going out together without the dog. Now we have to resort to speaking in Chinese when we don’t mean to include her. Hmmmm…..