So last week, I spilt the cat out of the beans and told everybody about Gustavo’s new project, a Well Trained Running Dogwalk. He has been working hard on this, with our at home driveway plank, as well as almost every day before work stops at the training field to work on a real lowered plank. I would like to report he’s doing great.

Training in the driveway, with distractions such as the evil nemesis Pistachio the goddamn cat from next door and trucks and stollers and our friend from down the street who’s 9 and cross training Gustavo to careen down the street pulling his bmx machine, isn’t preferable but a good way to get a few more repetitions on the board in every day.

So far, these zillion already repetitions have allowed me to become pretty clear on what the criteria is that I’m looking for in how his feet come down that board through the yellow paint. And since all the dogs are going through this project together, I get a lot of feet in yellow paint watching practice with Otterpop and Ruby before I run Gustavo through. Ruby already has a trained running dogwalk, so this is good brush up practice for her and for my timing. Otterpop is getting a free running dogwalk out of Gustavo’s, she has a hackjob of an untrained running dogwalk using the don’t try this at home method. So really, we’re getting two for the price of one here.

With Gustavo, I want to be absolutely clear and consistent on the criteria for him, because, well, because. Since I’m using Robot to dispense treats on a beep from the remote controller, I cannot beep a missed contact. So far, so good. I have this picture in my head of where his feet should be hitting, and if they don’t hit there, back up he goes for another try. By George, I think he’s getting it.

It’s pretty simple, really. You just watch that paint, and watch those feet, and when you see what you like, you hit the BEEP. And then you do it again. And again. And again. And so on.