Alyosha gets his first backpack

Morning Trip Report 10/9/2019. It’s overcast again and 57 degrees this morning , later this week the low prediction is 35 degrees — YES! Alyosha and I walked 3 miles with light backpacks each.

This backpack has a separate harness that you fit to the dog before adding the saddlebags. I’m getting used to it. Maybe. I need to get some rubberbands to tie up the dangling straps, Yosha kept stepping on them. I only put a 1 roll of paper towels in each side, so it wasn’t puffed up much. And he kept stepping on the straps until I tied them up, so it was hanging wonky on him at first. But he didn’t seem to mind the pack, kept striding out, which we were working on. So I ignored the pack since he seemed to.

Goal: Active Walking (on a loose lead)

Took him a lot longer to get the concept than Bayou. (Which is why 2 days ago we had the abysmal and short walk before we came home so I could regroup.) But he’s got a busy mind. With him, instead of Oops and a tap on the training collar which worked for Bayou, he needed more Oops, and We’re going here, we’re going there, we’re going the other way, before I could re-engage him. AND THEN give him forward momentum. But he figured it out. All dogs are different. Training has to be tailored to the individual.

All I’m asking for is a lead with no tension. That’s mindfulness, a concept I’m learning in yoga. It’s not enough to go through the motions, I must be present in the moment so my knee is over my ankle, my thigh muscle is pressed into my thigh bone, etc. I want him to be aware of the lead tension, or lack, and work to keep it that way.

And he did get the idea. Enough that I could stop and take pictures without him yanking me around by the lead.

Happy trails.
–SHS, 2019