Pogo is a nickname I earned many many years go when I was out mountain biking with the boys. During a particularly nasty wipeout I landed on my head and bounced before landing inches from the edge of a cliff. Once everyone recovered from the what ifs the nickname Pogo was born.
This really has nothing to do with this post — but I thought I’d mention it because I am passing the Pogo gauntlet over to Stryder.
We play a game in the park that I call sprint ball. There’s no ball involved — only the occasional stick, occasional rock and lots of imagination.
The way the game works is: I stand at the top of a hill, I pretend to pick up a rock, Stryder flings himself into the down position, he barks once, I throw the pretend rock as far as I can and he sprints after it like a flyball dog. I then turn around and do the same thing in the opposite direction as Stryder whips past me in an imaginary ball chasing frenzy.
In the process Stryder gets exhausted, exercises his lemon-sized brain, covers himself with slobber, and is constantly practicing his attentive listening and recall skills; treats hardly make Stryder attentive — but imaginary rocks do. I use pretend rocks because if I throw a real rock he won’t stop until he finds it and eats it. Dogs are weird.
Anyhow, on the way to the park, Stryder is so excited that he will get to play sprint ball that he jumps up and down in the back of the Jeep. Each time he does this he bangs his head on the light in the back just over the passenger seat. In doing so he turns the light on, then off, then on, then off… it’s really entertaining to watch and this excited behaviour has earned him the nickname Pogo.
Kima is nowhere near as intense; she was built for comfort whereas Stryder was built for speed. We had grand ideas for training her when we first got her — but ended up spending so much time on desensitization and aggression modification that regular training fell by the wayside. That said, Kima sits pretty and does a fantastic shake paw.
One of the things we wanted to do was teach her to sleep at the foot of Nina’s bed at night. This idea faded into the distance as we were dealing with aggression and shadow chasing. However, the idea has recently been resurrected because scary monsters lurk in the dark after the Canadian Makdragon retires and Nina becomes a little girl again.
So, we’ve transformed Kima into the Monster Hunter. Her job is to sleep at the end of Nina’s bed and keep the monsters away while she sleeps. It seems to be working and Kima has taken to her new job like a pro. She has so far spent two nights warning away the monsters with a little gruff when they get too close.
