We taught Finlay to “wait” before he is given his food, you say “wait” and he lays down, you put the food down and then say “go on then”. Works very well and he barely needed any training to do this. So imagine our surprise when we start walking him and reach the edge of the pavement to cross the road. “Wait” we say and on pretty much the first attempt, he sits and looks at us…..we then say “over” and he crosses the road. Our jaws nearly hit the floor. We have not trained him to do this, and yet since the first day walking and every day since, he is pretty flawless with this behaviour. But how, we haven’t trained him to do it and I’m pretty sure Aileen didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust him with traffic one bit. We’ve owned Tibbies long enough to know that obedience of this kind is one thing, but when a Tibbie suddenly wants to cross the road, they are going to do it, so the proper diligence is necessary requiring tight lead control. In Finlays case it is leaves blowing down the road, he’d chase them first and not think of the consequences, of course he would. But these initial good manners whilst out on lead were amazing to see. As for walking with a harness and lead, no bother. He just accepted them straight away, he’s not so keen on the lead when you’re preventing him from walking in the direction you want to go, it just means we are going in the wrong direction and Finlay is correct!
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