Snow days are becoming fairly common this year. When I first got the mutt we were already heading into spring, so it was a while before I got to see his thoughts on snow. I knew Mals were a sturdy breed; turns out when it comes to snow he barely notices and will even lie down in it when he’s on squirrel patrol. Suit yourself, I say.

We did make some progress on redirecting his attention to me on command on our walk today. The reason being is that he is fairly dog aggressive, so any thing with four legs out there catches his attention (and sometimes he walks into lamp posts because he’s not watching where he’s going). By redirecting his attention to me, he can then learn that he is rewarded for watching me when I tell him. This is a little different from attention heeling because when we’re on a walk I don’t care whether he’s right by my side, just so long as he’s not pulling me down the street. The sayings about always being able to reward your dog go a long way because sometimes you’ll need to do that when you least expect.  That’s one of our new firehose tugs from Elite K-9 that fits well into the back pocket (and King’s mouth), so it worked pretty well for taking with us on our walk.