Adventures in Winter Recall

Our -12 degree potty routine, our three feet of snow potty routine, is send Elka out back, call her back when she's done. And she gets done pretty quickly, and with good efficiency, as I've mentioned. Lately, though, some of that distractibility has crept back. God knows why, it's still -12 some mornings, and there's still three feet of snow out there.

But, I've begun to utilize the three count. I'll tell her to go potty, I'll say hurry up, and then I start to count. If I reach 3, I call her back and we go inside. Mostly, she gets busy at 2, if I even need to count.

The other night, though. She peed, and I was waiting for the second payload, when she suddenly picked her head up and was still, clearly on alert. In the sudden silence, I could hear something walking out back there, but couldn't see far enough in the dark past the fence. A deer, probably. We have a lot of deer.

Then Elka stood up on her hind legs like a meerkat, stood like that for a moment, and did her big 'protecting the perimeter bark which most often gets used on squirrels, and I thought "Oh shit, here's where Elka learns she can actually jump over our fence."

I whistled the recall and saw her ears flick, so I clapped and said "Elka! Here now!" and she wheeled on her hind legs like a rearing horse, came down on all fours, and ran right back to me without a backward glance. Thank God.