More Training Space!!

A couple of weekends ago, my husband and I spent a weekend day cleaning up the cellar a bit. There is more unpacking to do, since we had moved here 3 years ago now. Some of that still needs to be done, but we got most everything off the floor, more thrown away, and more put away.

The result is a fresh, new, heated space for Mannerly Mutts during the more winter months, and saving a bit of wear and tear on our family room carpet (which we are someday replacing with hardwood flooring). I also have a good enough space for a long distance and inside sit stay.

The dogs are able to amuse themselves with toys and themselves in this space, but I also want to set up some interesting obstacles to chase around, hide in, and have overall fun in. I have set up a low to the ground but above the ground balance beam for them. Leon and Jack, reluctant at first to try, now enjoy trotting across it to show off for everyone else. These sort of thinking and fun activities are what I provide for the dogs that stay here and train here.

This becomes just one more interesting and fun area in addition to over thirty acres of woods, the family room, the front yard, the beach, and all the interconnecting dirt roads for walks. Dogs need to be challenged and stimulated during the day to keep them healthy and balanced. I am not discounting the occasional quiet, cuddling days either. All of these things keep dogs from becoming bored or frustrated.

The cellar space can now become a space totally devoted to the entertainment of the dogs, and it will take a bit of imagination to optimize it. For instance, I have this hard blue plastic ball that no one has been much interested in, UNTIL the event of the cellar where it didn't roll downhill never to be retrieved. Now I am thinking, I have some wooden boards to make a maze of sorts or some sort of soccer like game down there for us to play. Dog houses that have an in and out door separately, could be fun places to hide and dart out from (Logan's favorite game).

Plus we are lucky enough to have direct access outside to the woods from the cellar. In the summer, the door could just be left open so dogs could go in and out as they see fit (always under supervision of course).

Anyway, I am excited to be using this new space in the new year!! It will also provide a space for small indoor group lessons when necessary. Actually this space became an excellent save one day when my elderly dog made a mess on the rug. We were able to transfer daycare to the cellar and outside, while the carpet cleaning man came for a rare 911 call. (Jazz can't see anymore so she stepped in it, and well.....)