Well, since I said Ruby could be on vacation, it wasn’t really fair to make her pose for pictures. And then, if I wanted to show you what we did on my day off, it wouldn’t be fair to do that without Ruby. So I just hired actors to stand in for the whole team to show you and so I wouldn’t be playing favorites between dogs. That’s not good pack management. You can see how many training opportunities I have to work on good manners just in a basic day off around the house. See, I am a good dog training example! But, as a disclaimer to all those dog training students out there, I don’t recommend always using hired stand-ins for training the real dogs. Just for special occasions.

So you know, they all eat breakfast together. Everyone has to wait patiently until all the food bowls are filled to eat.

Timmy has to get all his pills. He doesn’t have to do any tricks or anything for them.

Ruby and Otterpop totally climb on the little foot stool and do tricks while I give Timmy his pills. They are operant dogs. Gustavo is somewhere else. Maybe not so operant.

Took a walk. It would be neat if everyone walked quietly on a leash and didn’t pull.

Then Timmy just goes back to sleep for the most part.

Some of them like to hang out in the bathroom when I take a shower. I’m not sure if that is good or bad dog manners or not? Does Cesar Millan do that?

We had to do errands. They ride nicely in their crates. Thanks Susan Garrett’s Crate Games!

I had a bunch of office work to do so the small dogs all just slept quietly on the couch. Until it was mailman time.

Otterpop has a total mailman fetish. She waits here like a stealth assassin.

And when he comes, she sounds like she is going in for the kill. I wish you could hear the barking.

Augh. This is a bad habit. Good dog trainers do not let their dogs bark at mailmen.

At some point during the day, I realized, wow, it SO MUCH EASIER to work with the actors than the real dogs! Like for stuff like toenails!

They spent a lot of the day outside. Hey is that their border collie pals Hobbes and Fate? Of course not. They live in Salinas and Otterpop hates border collies. Can’t hire actors for every dog I know. Those are just fake deer.

Otterpop won’t give anyone the tennis ball.

And they all start digging holes again. Bad, bad dogs.

For agility practice, I LOVED working with the actors. Like look at Ruby and Otterpop just sitting so quietly while Gustavo practices his contact!

Gustavo worked on his poles.

Everyone did some tables. And we called it a day.