Cali and cars

Mona asked if it would be possible for Cali to get into a Ford Focus or maybe a Ford Taurus.

We'll see. I'll be teaching her to jump a little higher and to climb in better. She's a fearless climber. This afternoon I thought I'd teach her to jump over what's called a Caveletti. For horse's this is a jump not too big but for Cali it was higher than the length of her leg. I thought she'd jump it. But, not our Cali. One front leg over. There she was straddled with one leg over the pole the other front leg on the other side.

I used a target for this. She loves targeting. No pressure whats-so-ever on her halter. Just the target. She somehow got the other front leg over and then climbed the rest of the way over. So, once she is strong enough, she'll be able to climb into things. But, just what is possible we'll have to see.

After we did that a few times, we went outside to have a little grass because my husband had arrived home. As Dave walked down to say hello, Cali left the grass, went into the arena and targeted a cone. So, we figured it was time to start to teach her Cali's version of Panda Catch. For those that don't know Panda, if a few people come into the arena, Panda will run to a person's side and into "heel" position. For Cali, we took the cone she chose and tossed it to one another and let her run to us to "touch" the cone. Of course she got a click/treat for each touch.

Today, she also "found" mailboxes on our walk down the road. Today, 3 mailboxes where our "directions" to cross the street. Her crossing is really getting good. Very straight. And, she stops square when she reaches the terrain change road pavement to stones at the shoulder.

She found the guard rail again. Now, an interesting conundrem. She kept finding the guard rail. I don't want her to feel wrong as she pointed out each part of the rail. Not every foot nor every inch. But, somehow there was something that she was seeing that seemes worthy of pointing out.

For the second day I also carried a cane. Because I can envison Mona wanting to check out something that Cali points out without walking up to it. So, I didn't want Cali to be afraid of the cane. It took her a little while to discover that the cane was not a target. She wanted to "touch" the end. So, for awhile I'll let her point things out to me. Then, we'll try to refine what she finds. I did name some of the things like "mailbox" for future use as a "find".

"Hup" is coming along as a cue to speed up. She "hups" into trot. Generally a nice day.