Now that I broke the seal, we’ve been doing more bikejoring than scootering this spring. Aside from some stretches of rain and a few random heat waves, the weather has been pretty cooperative.

Yesterday we had a couple of encounters with a turtle that had been run over (RIP, turtle and SLOW DOWN, state park drivers! The speed limit is already only 20mph here.). The first video is on the way out and the second video is on the way back.

Pretty different!  One thing this makes me ponder is the concept of “willpower depletion” as it relates to my training and expectations of the dogs. You can read more about it here, but the basic idea is that we all have a limited amount of willpower to dole out during the day and as it gets used up, it gets harder and harder to exert self-control in tempting situations. It’s not settled science by any means, and you can find just as many articles that refute as support it.

The danger lies in either using it as an excuse rather than an explanation or ascribing it too much power and lowering your expectations as a result. There are lots of things that were different about these two encounters to explain the difference, chief among them that none of us knew it was there on the first pass but we all knew it was there on the second pass – and a Squash never, never forgets.  Also, the first time we went by we came around a corner off a dirt trail to the road and had a very short distance to even see and register what it was. The second time, we had a long straight stretch of road ahead of us where it was visible.

So I suspect that on that second pass he’d mostly just had an awful lot of time to see it, realize/remember what it was, think about much he wanted it, and commit to a plan.  With maybe just a little pinch of being a little tired and bored and willpower depleted.

Why what’s really going on here even matters to me is that there can be a fine balance between training challenges that are just that, challenges, vs those that are unfairly setting a dog up for failure. One of my great weaknesses when training my dogs is that I too often err on the side of the latter and in my efforts to avoid making things unrealistically difficult, I make them too easy. In this case, that might look like taking another route to avoid the turtle on the second pass and missing out on the opportunity to “win” the standoff. I’m not a master dog trainer, and my dogs and I are far from perfect, but I do like to try to learn from things like this.

In other news… Pip continues to do well, which is both surprising and welcome. He’s already outlasted his prognosis and while the old man is slowing down a bit, we’re still having a good time together.

Squash is taking a beginner’s disc (frisbee) class and that’s going ok. He does not have much natural interest or drive for toys so it’s been a learning experience to try to build that up in him.  I’ll try to get some pictures or video up at some point.

I hope everyone’s spring and summer are going well, and although we’re heading into summer and the weather might start limiting us, I’ll try to update a  bit more often.