Paddington the Circus Dog

Jonah has been hogging the blog a lot lately, so I thought I'd post something about Paddington Bear again! Because Paddy is such a demanding dog, I spend quality time with him everyday by trick training him. I am hoping that in the spring, he will be trained enough that we can teach him an agility course and compete with him. This is quite a high hope, because he needs to be able to perform outside, off leash, around distractions, and so he needs to mature quite a bit in his obedience training.

For now he is loving the attention that he gets during our training sessions, and of course the treats! Since he is a small dog, I can cut his treats into eighths, so a small $1.79 bag of really good treats (the sample bag) goes a long way. I took this video of us performing our tricks today (I got the date wrong, today is the 21st)It isn't an A+ video, because he has been really sick and eating pretty much nothing but rice and bland chicken, so liver treats were super exciting for him. So he is anticipating the reward A LOT in this video, and a lot of times it got in the way of his trick. It is still the best video I have (usually he stops working when the camera comes out- I think he is afraid of the lens)



He also knows "spin" and "talk to me" but those are still not consistent yet, and I decided not to ruin the video by adding tricks I might have to ask for several times. You can see in the video that he was a little confused and did "spin" when I asked him to roll. That is because I goofed and made my hand signal for spin very similar to the one for roll, and he still relies more on hand signals than word commands. Once he has all of his current tricks solid, we will be teaching him to make soccer goals!

On a side note, we have come to the realiation that Paddy is not a member of my beloved breed. He is not a yorkie, but a silky terrier. Although I had my heart set on a yorkie, for their looks, Paddy has stolen my heart and I don't care if he grew up to be a doberman! We might get a true yorkie from a more reputable breeder in a couple of years, and I am not sure if I should write Paddington's breeder an angry email or not. On one hand, I got a wonderful dog who I love, but on the other hand, this guy kind of ripped me off and wasn't true to his word. I can't help but think of how many other people he is hurting, and how many people will dump their dogs in shelters or by the side of the road because they turned out to be completely different than what they had wanted. Paddy is three times bigger than a yorkie, and has much shorter hair and a longer narrower snout. The vet agreed that I got taken, and that Paddy is definitely not a yorkie. So beware to all my friends who are thinking of getting a dog: make sure you know who you are dealing with, and if the breed of dog you want happens to be popular at the time (I did not know that yorkies were the most popular breed in the US at the time of my purchase) be aware of the scams that people are trying to pull over!