Been some time since the last post on doggy parkour. Here’s Donna perched on a wall. She wants to get down already.
What else has she been up on lately? Artificial tree trunk stone stools, now these are pretty good for canine urban agility challenge.
These come in rows of three to five stools, so she has been slowly hopping from one stool to the next. The most she achieved was three consecutive stools so far :P
It really does test her agility to stand and sit on these stones, given the size of their surfaces and their distance apart. So I don’t really push her to do it when she doesn’t want to.
One day, in the same park, I saw this tiny kitten jumping up and down that tiny ledge along the wall fencing the police station. It’s definitely more agile than Donna! :P
And in the last couple of days, inspired by zeke’s adventures, we went to another nearby fitness corner in an attempt to train Donna to “jump” over these bars. As you can see, she much prefers to put her paws on the bars to help herself over rather than jump over. – –
We went leash-free for a few minutes and she cleared the bar without touching it.
I’m starting to get more comfortable with her being off the leash for few minutes at a time because we have been practising with her to “walk with me” at home and also in the small little secluded park downstairs (usually free of people and dogs). And when she gets into training mode, she can sometimes be quite focused. That is when I am more comfortable letting her off-leash for a few minutes at a time, never more because one never knows when something may suddenly spook her or draw her excitement.
She doesn’t have a strong recall or heel yet, so I’m always paranoid about her running away because she has been spooked or running to scare small children or dogs that happen on us before I can stop her. And when she is restless/distracted, then we just go for a nice, relaxing leashed walk instead.
If doggy parkour is new to you, you can read more about Urban Agility Challenge for Dogs here.
Note: It is illegal for the dog to be off leash in public areas in our country. I will not be responsible if local readers let your dog(s) off leash at your own risk/discretion. I generally don’t so why am I incriminating myself by blogging about this? :P
