This winter, I bought a whole classic ski setup so that O and I can have something to do outside together besides walking (boring for him) and going to the dog park (boring for me). We started off slowly, because it took me a few times to get the hang of it and stop falling on my ass every ten minutes. And there was a particularly bad outing where O just plain ran away and spent the whole afternoon playing outside of our old house. while I skied back to the car and drove home alone, calling the muni on the way to once again report my missing dog.
But gradually we got the hang of it and I started to enjoy these short 3km skis together. And then my parents came to visit for a week. My dad is allergic to dogs and neither he nor my mom are big dog kind of people (O weighs 70 lbs; their dog weighs 10 lbs), so I pretty much ignored O for an entire week.
After a fantastic visit, my parents left and I attempted to get back into my normal routine. I took O for a ski. And it was awful. Terrible. Not fun at all. He charged at people, ran way ahead of me, and adopted a group of 20-somethings as his new family, playing with them on the frozen lake and ignoring me completely as I called after him and waved treats in the air, to no avail. I put on his leash and slowly wiggled my skis along the track, all the while cursing O and feeling frustrated and angry.
And then it dawned on me - I wasn't setting him up for success. I was simply expecting him to be good and then getting mad when he wasn't. And the solution? So simple! Now I take him to the dog park first, let him run off all his craziness and hump other dogs, and then we head out for a ski together. We've been three times since my 'ah-ha' moment and every time has been great. Now he trots along beside me like a well-behaved dog and plays with me on the lake instead of running after other people. And all it took was some well-planned humping time.
