Today is nearly -30 F with the wind chill so I made the executive decision that neither of us would be going outside today lol. So, keeping her mind active with obedience and trick training will have to do. I decided a couple of days ago to teach Bella to play dead. I was trying to capture how dramatic she is about it on video...which is hard to do alone. Bella is infamous for losing focus the minute I'm holding a camera, as I can't make good solid eye contact (not so much for her posed photos, but any time I try to get her obedience or trick training - or maybe its me who is bad at multi-tasking!). She knows how to "stand" which is also the same for saying "Stick 'em up", so I wanted her to learn to fall down dead from that stance. I trained the command "dead" but will ultimately say "bang" later on...which is why the tone and volume are so dramatic. She falls down, crawls a few inches (she also knows how to army crawl) before she rolls over and gives the most pathetic look. An acress in the family! Who knew

The quality is terrible as I had to trim and upload directly from my phone. Which, turns out steals most of the image quality. However, still a cute little snippet. I have no idea why we call the one trick "Olay"...husband did that one night on a goofy whim and the trick and name stuck lol.

Well, no luck in warming up today. It was -17 (over -30 with the wind chill) when we got up this morning at. We did muster of the courage to go outside today for a bit. Though, Bella looked a bit unconvinced it would be worth it


In the meantime, being trapped inside, I took another little video. No treats (though, you can see her check my unused hand at the very beginning to know if there will be or not). A little more true to a session since I wasn't making it a more upbeat exciting session like yesterday in hopes of mentally wearing her out. So, verbal cues much more soft spoken, she focuses a little more on the hand cues. I usually use the entire house for recall, "heel", and "wait"...but, I can't film that myself.

February is usually our coldest month. It's very rare for schools to close based on temps I think we were near -40 at the coldest the past two days. If you're dressed for it...it can go somewhat unnoticed...if it isn't windy. The wind is what blows it right through you. I'm headed to AR the end of this month and it will probably be in the 40's and 50's while we are there. It's odd, but I'm usually colder there than at home. 1. I don't dress as well down South and 2. there's more humidity. We have a very dry cold.

Thank you for the compliment. At one point in time in the past I had wanted to be a dog trainer....with no basis as I had never really trained a dog, but always found learning different methods and dog psyche very interesting (actually, wanted to be a animal behaviorist, but settled for a plain ole psych degree due to the options my school had).  Bella was my first chance I've had to train a dog how I want. Luckily the hubbs is very involved as well, and we have agreed most of the time so can stay very consistent. I think she has made it very easy, though. She seems just to be a phenomenal girl, sweet and loyal, eager to please, but I am biased lol. She has her crazy girl moments. I can only hold her attention about half that long if we are somewhere exciting. I interchange play and training outdoors to keep her interested, and to work while we have fun

*edit to add -- Here the saying is that you suffer through the winters to enjoy the perfect summers!

Thank you for posting the videos!  Great inspiration as we work with our 9-month old.  It's also my first time training a dog, so I often feel it takes me much longer to figure out how to communicate something than it does our boy to learn it.   

Awesome job with Bella, and she is so adorable!