March 9: Ildi's new habits

We've noticed that Ildi is getting confident and curious and we've discovered that with that comes more 'bad' habits (read habits that we need to figure out how to stop or curb).

Perhaps it's timed with the relief of a warm week so all the snow has melted everywhere and in the fields we always walk in she seems to have a new wealth of smells available to her. In areas we once let her off-leash to explore and she would come when called, there is now no way she will return to you; she wanders off further in the opposite direction and I can actually believe that she can't hear you at all when she's in scent tracking mode. Like the Dog Whisperer says, '60% of her brain is controlled by smell' so that means that more than half of her brain is turned off to us humans. But it's getting worse and we fear we're ruining the recall command when we call her and she doesn't come. A few times she's even popped her head up, looked right at us, we call her and she runs in the other direction - still scent tracking of course. So we're going back to basics in some ways. We're only going to let her off-leash if we're certain she will come back to us and when she's playing with other dogs in the off-leash park. And we're going to be practicing our recall command under heavy distraction. I'm curious what this experience was like for other hunting dogs as puppies. I'll have to ask my friend who has two adult Vizslas.

Another one is that with the warm weather, the glacier in our backyard has melted so she can finally go and explore. Except we've learned that in her mind that means chew off branches or pull them out from the ground and eat the decorative grass (that once stood 5 ft tall) and any other periennal. I suppose we then shouldn't let her into the backyard unless we can supervise her at all times, but she was just moments away from figuring out how to get past our barriers so she would have gotten to the backyard on her own anyways. and she loves the backyard! whenever she's bored in the house she asks to go out and just sits in the yard - then starts to chew and eat my plants. I'm curious if dogs grow out of this behaviour?
oh - and here's a link to a site that lists all the indoor and outdoor plants that are poisonous to dogs; looks like I have some pulling to do :(
http://www.dogpack.com/health/poisonplants.htm

And suddenly she's started barking more. She now barks when she's playing with other dogs - as if to invite them to keep playing. and she started barking yesterday at something in the backyard that freaked her out (I think it was the wind), but she continued barking from inside the house still - at whatever was freaking her out. Then again last night when we were seeing friends and their puppy to the door (after a puppy play session). She stood behind her gate barking - obviously upset that she was left alone in the kitchen and she could see us all standing just a few feet away, but she never would have started barking in that situation before. Someone once told that as she gets more confident, she'll bark more. hmmm - how to curb this, fast!

but thankfully, at the end of the day, she still loves a good cuddle and nap in our laps! that always help to melt away the frustrations of the day :)