Evening walk and practicing "just being"

Link by the lake, lots of terns flying around and lots of ducks on the water.

 This evening, Link and I went for a walk around a small lake here in Tromsø,where a lot of birds gather to nest and have their young every summer. I took the opportunity to training Link in the art of "just being". Just sitting there and let the birds fly and swim near us, let people and dogs walk by, without doing anything. No commands, no redirections, just relaxing.

This red throated loon came really close to us but Link didn't pay it much attention.

 Link did excellent as far as birds and humans go, but I can't say that we are done training when it comes to dogs passing us. I managed to get him not to bark at one dog, when I continuously clicked and treated while it walked by. But Link will not let the dog out of his sight for one second. Apart form that one dog, he barked at the others. Not constantly, but a few strong "woofs" per dog, just to get them to think that he is big and tough. Really he is insecure, but he doesn't want them to know that.. Silly Link. It couldn't be more obvious...

Link barking out of frustration, another dog just passed us and here he is trying to get me to understand that he doesn't like this game anymore. He wants to continue the walk. I waited until he was calm again before we continued walking.

Being able to do nothing is an important part of being a therapy dog. Sometimes the only thing the therapy dog should do is be in the room. And also if you find yourself in a situation where you have to have all of your attention on the person/patient, it is a good thing if the dog can just lie down and relax until it is time to "work" again. I realize I haven't written anything about the therapy dog course and training after we attended the first part of the course in May, I promise to come back to that in another blog post!