Go Get My Mitten

I dropped the scarf and the dog picked it up.

It progressed to drop the scarf when the dog isn't looking, walk a few feet, and ask the dog to get one of his new favourite play toys. Over time we increased the distance, till we got the point we were twenty, thirty, forty feet away before I send him back now for the black winter leather mitten, that was just easier for the dog to carry without the trailing scarf trailing, tangling and trying to trip him as he blasted back to you at a 100 miles an hour.

Then the winter when he turned two he began to increase the winter distance between us when we walk and at the same time I began again once increase the distance that before I asked him to "Go Get My Mitten."

Then one day after a particularly grueling walk I was so thankful as I slid into the comfort of the car, so ready to get off my feet and as I reached into my pocket I came to the realization that I had lost my phone. Sometime during the walk the phone had slipped out of my coat pocket and fallen into the white fluffy snow on a road that had not been cleared since the last two snowfalls and with only one truck trail to follow. Luckily the snow was not deep but still how was I ever going to find the phone considering the distance and the fact it could have fallen anywhere along the way and probably with my luck drifted down into the snow rather than laying out clearly to be seen on the narrow compacted tire track.

Wearily I got out of the car once more, stressed about the phone and asked Jasper to jump out of the car and told him to "Go get my phone." Now while this was not a command that we had ever practiced, I hoped it was similar enough to the "Go get my mitten" That he would get the idea. I mean I know he absolutely no clue on what a phone was. I could but hope but I have to admit there wasn't a lot of it in my heart. Hope that is.

So off we trudged.

Off he went bounding away I think as pleased to be going for another walk as to any idea of "getting" a "phone." After a ways with nothing in sight and no mitten to be found, he offered to run into the bush at the side of road to find me something. A gruff and cranky "No, the dang phone is not to be found anywhere in the bush" and another command said a little nicer to "Go get my phone" had him bounding off once again down the road.

But this was so different from anything that he had ever done before. In the past he could see this black dot on the road if he really looked. More recently he had to run a little way before he might have been able to see it from his height. But this was so much more than this. And I had no idea if either of us would be able to see this or how covered in snow the phone would be.

Once again, after proceeding a way and still not finding anything he offered to go into the side brush to find me something interesting. Again another cranky "NO the phone is not in there" and a more sedate "Go find my phone." again had him bounding down the road.

As I morosely walked along my head down scanning the snow beside the tire track that I had carefully followed earlier I doubted that we would ever find that phone and the grey sky was turning darker as the sky turned towards twilight. The dark grey sky perfectly mirrored my grumpy mood.

Suddenly in my peripheral vision I saw Jasper pounce, once, twice and then as I looked up a scrabbling of front legs as he dug into the snow.

He found it!!!

A few feet later once again he dropped it, having a hard time to hold this slippery thing lightly in his jaws, only to madly dig for it in the snow once more, the phone snuggled into his jaw, he raced back only to drop the phone at my feet as it slid from his grinning jaw, as he accepted the rubs and pats by his ecstatic mom. "What a clever, clever boy!" I enthusiastically attacked him, absolutely amazed and thrilled with what he had done.

I really couldn't believe it. I was so proud of him at that moment.

Who knew that a silly game of 'Go Get My Mitten' could have turned out to be the thing to save my phone. This speaks I think to the idea that they are not a machine. If they can make connections between things that maybe really are not the same here in these kind of circumstances, how much can we use this in our training. We train for one thing, but it can turn into so much more, if we just give them the room to explore the possibilities.