Put-your-nose-on-it with Skittles

FINALLY some warm weather! Yay! It was gorgeous today (+6/+7C)! I spent some time playing with Skittles around the yard. She tends to pay better attention to me when we're in an arena. In the big outdoors, there are TONS of distractions, so it's more of a challenge for her to pay attention and stay left-brained. So I figure we should do lots more scary stuff outside to help this.

Today we just played "put your nose on it". I would drive her up to a variety of objects all around the house and ask her to put her nose on it. To add to the challenge, I did it on her "bad" side (right side). Our first objects were the big round hay bales... she had no problem putting her nose on those! She also took a couple big mouthfuls. Then we tried some buried flower pots, my picnic table, the trampoline, a few trees, a birdhouse, a taboggan and the big black garbage bin beside the house. She had the most trouble with this one because it was right next to the back step and we had our compost bin on the step which had a compostable bag flapping around in the wind. So we did some approach and retreat with that one as well as some squeeze beside it a few times. She eventually did put her nose on it, but didn't really relax. I left it at that... we can come back to that later! I also brought her into the garage a few times and up and down the driveway insisting she stick with me (at my shoulder). She didn't do as well today as she did while we were in the arena last weekend, but we'll build on it.

She did great with putting her nose on everything. She's a smarty-pants. She figured out what I was asking after about the 2nd try. And every new thing I brought her to she put her nose on. She's still pretty right-brained, but if I keep doing this along with other games, she'll get as good outside as she is inside.