Emma’s Dog Training Project

Most of you know Emma….

Now meet Lizzie….

Emma has recently taken a HUGE interest in Lizzie. She tries to get Lizzie to play with her and listen to her commands.

Unfortunately, Lizzie has other ideas. She great about listening to grown-ups’ commands, but she needs a little motivation to start listening to Emma.

This week begins Emma’s dog training project. We’re going to work with Lizzie this week to see if we can get her to obey commands given only by Emma. That means no grown-up standing behind Emma giving non-verbal commands to make Emma THINK Lizzie is listening to her. *ahem* Not that we have ever done that, of course.

Tonight we went to Walmart to buy some motivation. We wanted to make sure that the treats we were buying would be healthy, especially since Lizzie would be getting a LOT more treats than usual in the coming week. Lizzie is 8 years old, and she’s gotten a little thicker around the middle over the past couple of years. We didn’t want our project to add to that.  Fortunately Lizzie is smart and has proven herself a quick learner when we’ve trained her in the past. So – much to Lizzie’s dismay – we may not need as many treats as we think.

I was amazed at the sheer number of dog treat choices at Walmart. We usually buy Milk-Bone® biscuits for Lizzie, but we needed something special for this project. We decided on the flavored Milk-Bone® Minis because Emma could give Lizzie LOTS of those before it added up to a huge treat. We also chose Pup-Peroni Lean treats (keeping that doggie waistline in mind!) and Milo’s Kitchen Chicken Jerky. I have a feeling Lizzie’s going to be super-impressed with those since she’s only used to plain biscuits! Maybe that will help her sit up (literally) and take notice of Emma’s commands.

Emma even picked out a couple of new toys for Lizzie… just for fun. Lizzie is a heavy chewer, so we’ll see how long those last! You can check out our whole shopping trip (complete with pictures of the squeaky chicken & duck toys that Emma tried out) here. We had a ball shopping, and Lizzie was super-excited about her new toy!

Hopefully she’ll be just as excited about learning to listen to Emma’s commands. We’ll be back next week to show you our progress.  🙂

This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias. All opinions are honest and my own… including the part about Lizzie being a little wider in the middle. Just don’t tell her I said that. #ILoveMyk9 #CBias