We didn't know it when we adopted her, but our dog Gianna came fully loaded. She knew how to sit, stay, retrieve, etc. It was something like buying a car blindly and then being pleasantly surprised it has leather and a sunroof.
With this inherited obedience training, we didn't have to start from scratch and got a lot of credit at the dog park that we didn't deserve.
I knew Gianna could learn more, and she wanted to learn more. We're nowhere close to Nana the Border Collie but we're taking steps forward. First, we taught her how to rollover, which she does a little spastically. Now I'm working on getting her to run in between my legs before fetching, hopefully moving toward her alternating crossing between my legs as I walk. We stumbled across Gianna's inclination to run through our legs when Amanda and I were playing catch with a softball in the front yard. She picked up a command right away.
I'm sure Gianna would be some world-class agility dog if she had the right training because she's got the instinct.
I have my own tricks to learn, too, with my new camera. There's a lot to tweak and learn, especially with video. Like teaching the dog a new trick, practice makes perfect, so I'm shooting a lot of photos again. It's a blast. Here are some more photos from a great afternoon at Chambers Creek Park in University Place.
