Bark-Cookies

I've been busy cleaning and repairing gutters.  Not a formidable task, but my foot limits how long I can stand on the ladder, as well as the number of trips up and down it.

I've been working on Gimme's fence running and barking all summer.  She's gotten so much better, now seeing it as a big game that she plays with me.  That's good because she doesn't bark as much, plus the attitude is better, thus no risk she'll decide to not-like what she's barking at.  Though she does still have 'tude about people who walk dogs past our house (we'll do set-ups to train that separately).

Gimme now stands eagerly watching from one of the two front corners of the yard, looking up the street for something bark-worthy, wagging her tail in happy anticipation.  She had to learn that stuff 2 blocks away, doesn't qualify for cookies.  She is always trying to game the system.  She sometimes doesn't bark, but then if I'm not paying attention has to bark to show me that she's not barking, doncha know. 

Anyway, she's making headway.  However being up on a ladder puts a kink in the training, since there is no way to give her the favorite - anything peanut butter - from up there.  Multiple trips up and down the ladder really shortened my ability to make headway on the gutter project.  And coming down the ladder to reward her is not timely.

Then I hit on the brilliant idea of buying her Nutter Butter cookies, since they have real peanut butter in them and would be a big enough chunk (even broken in pieces) to throw down to her.  So I bought a bag of Target's generic version and had them in my work bag when I came home.  Gimme is really good about not getting into things, so I didn't think anything of setting it down with the cookies in it. 

I didn't think anything of it, until I went looking for them and discovered the plastic bag and cookies were missing.  I figured she'd gotten out the dog door with them when I wasn't looking and made short work of them.  Imagine my surprise to find she had stashed them in the corner behind my sewing table, without opening them.  I think she put them away for safe keeping, especially after seeing me give Grafton one of her rawhide chews (for his birthday).  I guess she didn't want me to get carried away with the whole gifting thing.

Anyway, the PB cookies are working great and she's made good progress over the weekend and today.  I've even started tossing her the random cookie for just hanging out near me without scanning for bark-worthy things.  A couple of times when I saw her in time, starting to run up and bark at something, when I called her she turned on a thin dime to get back to me.  Yay Gimme...