Last week, Ben and I loaded the girls into the car to take them to the park. I haven’t been working as much with Piper so she was dealing with some excess energy that needed to be burned off. A long game of fetch seemed like the perfect remedy.

When Ben was unloading Rylie (whose 14-year-old body needs to be carried into and out of the car), Piper bolted out of the door and into the street. Luckily there were no cars coming. This was reminder #1 that I’ve been slacking on training.

I put Pips right back in the car, made her wait, then let her back out the right way. Walked her down the hill to the bottom of the park, checked our surroundings, and let her off leash for a game of fetch. She bolted again, this time for an off-leash dog on the other side of the park. She completely ignored my recall, which she has NEVER done before. Thankfully, the German Shepherd was well-behaved and his owner was chill as I apologized profusely for my poorly behaved dog and my irresponsibility as a handler. Reminder #2 that there are consequences when you take obedience for granted.

This park trip could have turned out very bad (twice), but luckily it didn’t. I got a good reminder that even well-trained dogs can revert to bad behaviors when you don’t work consistently with them. Looks like we need to take a step back from performance events and get back to obedience basics. Lesson learned.

Side note: When we finally caught up to Pips and the Shepherd, his owner asked what kind of dogs the girls were. When I said “Labradors” he said “Oh, they’re really small.” I think I mumbled “They’re the English style” but it took all my willpower not to say “Nope, this is how they’re supposed to look.” Oh well…