Apparently, dogs aren’t the only things that show up miraculously after being missing for a while.
Yesterday, Barbara had to leave early for a meeting, so I took Callie on her morning jog/walk — jog for me, walk for her. I wore Barbara’s “fanny pack,” which contains water bottles, plastic bags (for you-know-what), puppy treats, Callie’s clicker, and a few odd golf balls. I used the clicker a few times to reward Callie for her good behavior. We’re having to work a little on “heeling,” but most of the time she did a really good job and got rewarded.
We cut across the walk bridge on one of the holes on the nearby golf course, with Callie proudly carrying her rubber baseball. It’s about 150 yards from where we started to the other side, and it’s about a 50 foot vertical drop. So when Callie dropped her ball, it really took off rolling down the bridge — which is just wide enough for a golf cart.
At first, we tried to catch it, but the bridge was slippery from dew, and I knew we weren’t going to go as fast as the ball. Lucky for us, the ball rolled straight off the end of the bridge and stopped in some tall grass.
But when I started running, some puppy treats popped out of the fanny pack, and I realized that Callie’s clicker — for clicker training — was missing. So we backtracked across the bridge, but there was no clicker. So later in the day, with my puppy tail “between my legs,” I had to tell Barbara that I had lost the clicker.
Well, this morning, I was practicing my chipping and putting on the golf course, and the assistant green’s superintendent drove up in his cart with a blue clicker and asked if it was ours. I was pretty amazed, having given the thing up for dead. (I had actually re-traced part of our route later in the day to see if I could spot it on the street.)
Someone found it and put it on the head greenskeeper’s cart. Miracles do happen!
So Callie’s back in the training business.
i love your dog or puppy with the soccer ball =)