Retire Schmreetire

I was ready. I thought he was ready. But I was wrong. There, I just admitted in writing that I was wrong. Make a note.

Frankie has been doing very well lately with his training. And it appeared that the bonding process was also going well. He still pays some attention to Rick, but the majority of his attention goes to me.

The hubby has been off work for the past week or so. These past few days we've gone out, but I've haven't been feeling well enough to shop, so I've stayed in the truck. I decided those times we went out to take Frankie. Even though I didn't need him to work, I kind of wanted to show off Frankie's excellent behavior in the vehicle. The hubby hadn't had the proper tools to do this training (remote shock collars rule!), so when Frankie was transferred over to me, this was one of the first areas I started working on. I demand Civil Car Behavior from my dogs.

Well, on these outings, Frankie's Car Behavior was spot-on. The hubby was very impressed. I like that.

So today we went out to Frys. This time I wanted to come in (I never pass up an opportunity to shop at Frys!), so I decided to work Frankie and see how it went. I thought since his car behavior is so good and since the bonding has been going well, I'd give it a test to see just how bonded Frankie is to me. Or, to put it another way, to see if the very strong bond between him and the hubby has waned.

It hasn't.

At first, everything seemed hunky-dory. The hubby was walking behind us on the way into the store and Frankie was pulling forward and looking at me. He would occasionally glance back at the hub, but no biggie.

Everything changed once we got into the store and the hubby and I went off in different directions. At first, Frankie seemed a bit distracted but he kept on working. But after more time went by, I could tell that he was looking at every male in the store to see if he was Daddy.

And it got progressively worse. It seemed like all my commands were entering Frankie's brain, and that he was actually still processing them. But then they'd get pushed out by his own internal command of "FIND DADDY NOW!". So, he would sit/down and then he would get up and look for Daddy. Or he would untangle his lines but then get tangled up again looking for Daddy.

So, I guess Willie doesn't have to retire yet! Technically (as per Frankie's breeder-mommy-trainer-exceptional-human Lori), we have a minimum of two more months to go with the Bonding Process. And then we try this test again.

All in all, it was a good way to get a feel for where I'm at in the training and bonding process. Heck, you don't know until you try!


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