A walk in the other park

On occasion, Elka and I hop into the car and go to another park that's just outside of town. It's nice and quiet there, and there tend to be few people or other dogs around. 

The other park is a great place for us to stretch our legs, but also work on varying training things. Mostly recall, but also occasionally ignoring other dogs. Right when we arrived, there was an adolescent Vizsla on a retractable leash. He wanted very very much to get to know Elka, and was far too spastic for me to even begin to entertain that notion. We started to take a wide angle, and the owner kind of did, but not really. The Vizsla ended up dragging out about 4 feet from his locked retractable leash before I essentially curled a lip and said "Get your dog!" and the owner got the picture.

Elka was staring at him, as she does, and she was getting ready to bounce around, mohawk, and perhaps bark. After I said that, and before she did any of those things, I turned to her, said "That's not your problem" and stuck a pork rind in her mouth. Well. She completely forgot the existence of that other dog, and we sallied forth through the park.

We also work on down stay, up close and also at a distance. Though this is a new park with all kinds of exciting smells, it's also fairly low distraction. No critters running about and, as I said, few other people.

I brought treats, obviously. Other than pork rinds (I only brought two of those), I had leftover pork loin that I diced up. Somebody was very, very good at maintaining a heel when she realized roast pork was involved, even without my cuing her to do so. For recall reward, I had a small stuffed hedgehog that squeaks. Poor hedgehog probably isn't much longer for this world, as stuffed toys, even in the tiniest doses, are clearly not actually made for dogs to chew on.