Winter - Snowbiking and Dog Training

Lest you think that Shyla is always on the go, here's a photo of her lingering in bed while I was getting ready for our morning snow bike ride. She has my routine memorized to the smallest detail. She keeps her eyes half open to monitor me and rarely emerges from her luxurious snoozing spot until I'm completely ready to go.

It feels as if we've had endless days of gray skies and light snow that leaves fresh coat of white almost every morning. While the light has been drab, the snowbiking conditions have been fabulous. I did a long singletrack loop today after I dropped Shyla off at home because the snow conditions are so good.

The conditions also seem to be good for retrieving!

Occasionally, during these gray days, there's a flash of weak sunshine when the sun finds a hole in the cloud cover. We usually stop to play some training games for the brief moments that it's sunny. You've seen Shyla wave with her right paw many times - it's one of her favorite tricks.

Well, she's now very reliable at understanding the different cues for waving with her right versus her left paw. Here's the left paw. She doesn't raise it quite as high yet... but she does wave with it!

I've taught R the same two cues so he can wave with his left or right paw, depending on which one I ask for. But, it was very funny the first time that I put the Duo next to each other to have them wave in sync. They both looked at me as if they'd never heard the wave cues before! This is a perfect example of how dogs don't generalize. Each of them understood the verbal cue for waving as only applying when they were sitting by themselves.

So, I retrained them sitting side-by-side, and I'm really hoping that I can get a video of them waving with with alternating paws in sync. We still have more work to do before we achieve that goal. Yesterday, when I held a camera in my hand, they both "forgot" what the cues meant - yet again. So now I need to retrain them while I hold a camera. Eventually, they *will* generalize the cues for waving!

I'm really rooting for a sunny day soon to help keep our spirits up. Today I went wild trying to add some color to my photos, with a red neck warmer and a purple toy. Color is a big part of what I love about photography.

But, the pristine beauty of the hoar frost that has appeared on branches almost every morning recently does make me smile too.

Our days are now getting perceptibly longer. Before we know it, we'll be at the equinox! More daylight makes me happy!