smart, smart doggy

Taenzer is wasted with me--she is SO smart. She needs someone who can and will work with her and bring out her amazing intelligence and athletic talent.

I don't know if I can describe all this, but I'm going to give it a try because it was so amazing and amusing. (And of course I didn't have the camera with me.)

I've got this little fenced area set up with tunnels, a dogwalk, a teeter, some PVC jumps, but mostly Timber lies in the grass and watches Taenzer do her thing, which is to run at full tilt pushing the ball. She especially loves tunnels. The 12-footer has plastic lattice panels on either side of it because she loves to smash the ball into it, and I'm hoping to get this tunnel to last two years instead of one. Well, she loves the plastic because now it makes noise when she smashes her ball into it. She aims it toward the middle of the tunnel, gets it going, then she dashes around to one end of the tunnel, gallops through, comes out the other end, and picks up the ball where it's waiting for her at the lattice panel. She very often pushes the ball through the 6-foot tunnel--just gets it lined up and goes. With that one both Taenzer and the ball go through. She's jazzier with the 3-foot tunnel--she approaches the entrance at about a 45-degree angle and at just the right moment gives the ball a nudge and it goes off at an angle, through the tunnel smooth as you please, while she goes around and picks it up at the other end.

She also rolls it under the dogwalk--which is only about maybe knee-high on me--jumps the dogwalk and picks up the ball on the other side. Tonight I watched her give it a push parallel with the dogwalk; as it was rolling she jumped the dogwalk at an angle, took a stride, jumped back across at the complementary angle, and picked the ball up as it came past. I mean, she is just amazing to watch and endleslly inventive with what she does. (To give you an idea--check this out: (think it's from last year) http://new.photos.yahoo.com/msjhwiu/album/576460762341661125

She'd been making hash out of the jumps, though--they made such a great crash when she hit them with a ball, and the impact kept knocking them apart--so I got tired of it tonight and broke the jumps down and put them in their carry-bag. But I wanted to give her something else to do, so I found an old leaf tip. It's about the size of the 3-foot tunnel, but it has a bottom. I ran a bungee cord through one of the handles and anchored it to the dogwalk upright so it wouldn't roll around too much. I set it up so it was parallel with the dogwalk. She ran the ball in right away, and was surprised when it didn't come out the other end. Gave me this look like "Hey! What's with this? Very funny, joke, Mom (not!)" Went back to the front, did some digging, and got the ball out.

In the ensuing play, the leaf tip got turned so the mouth was facing the ramp of the dogwalk. Taenzer parked her ball beside the ramp, jumped over it, looked the leaf tip over, peeked under the ramp into the mouth. Then she jumped back over the ramp, picked up her ball (what I mean when I say "picked up her ball" is not that she picks it up in her mouth, just that she gets it with her nose on the way past. She drives it with her front feet if she's not going fast, but for speed and accuracy she uses her nose). So, she picked up her ball, took it around the puppy pen a couple of times like a hockey player with a puck getting up speed, then came around and so neatly you'd think she'd practiced it, dropped it under the ramp and into the leaf tip. It was just amazing. I mean, she'd obviously studied the set up, thought about it, planned it out, and executed.

So now I'm trying to think of other things I can do that will amuse her and engage her brain. I'm trying to think of something I could make out of PVC pipe dropped over a bamboo stake (for maximum rattle) and plastic lattice that would be challenging and fun for her. Like maybe a zig-zag course with a tunnel in the middle and/or at the end. Tall enough to keep the ball in, and wide enough for her to manuver through it easily, but not so tall or wide that she couldn't jump over it. Maybe I could start with a simple Z-shape with easy angles, fairly long, and as she got better at it, make the lengths of the legs shorter and vary the angles, maybe make some of them "blind" so she could bash her ball into the back and bounce it off. Two-foot lattice, I guess, since it comes in 2-foot and 4-foot widths and I don't want her jumping 48 inches as a regular thing. Maybe I could set the tire jump up so the ball would go under, but she'd have to jump through.

I wonder if I set poles up--PVC pipe over bamboo stakes--if she'd weave the ball through them? I'll have to think about how to encourage her to figure that out. If I put them down the center of an alley of lattice? Start with maybe 3--one about a foot in, one half way, one a foot from the end--the poles would have to be far enough apart for her to get the ball through--farther, I think, than regular weave poles. Maybe have to offset the poles to encourage the weave?

Something to keep both our brains busy.