fire and control

Mom and I like to make a snack of bread + butter pickle slices and cheese on whole wheat crackers.  Whenever Spence knows someone is snacking he will shuffle his short little body into the kitchen to see what’s up.  Mom is a sucker and will almost ALWAYS give him a taste of what she’s got unless it’s on the ABSOLUTELY NEVER GIVE TO THE DOGS list (nuts, grapes, chocolate, etc.)  Anyway so we’re in the kitchen preparing the snack and I see Spence is already chomping on something.  “What did you give him?” I asked Mom and she replies of course, “A cracker…”  A whole damn cracker for doing nothing.

So instead of just giving away freebies, I used one small cracker to get several spins, even a few jumping-spins in BOTH directions out of him.  Since I was so impressed (we’ve only practiced spins with food -and not the disc- a few times) I decided to bring out the hoop.  Now keep in mind this is only the 2nd time EVER Spence has seen the hoop.  And here he goes jumping (like, actually jumping) without me luring him with a treat.  I was just saying “Spence Hoop!” and he would give me a solid hop and I would praise and treat.

It’s like magic.