I have many rituals in my life.
Every morning, I have a ritual.
I get out of bed, make myself presentable to the world, let the dogs out to pee, kiss Adoring Husband goodbye and then I pedal off to get my coffee and meet my boys at the Seat of Knowledge.
Every night, I follow a ritual.
The last thing I do is update this blog. Then I close the windows and doors, pull the blinds closed, let the dogs out for one last pee, fill the water bottles and put them in the fridge, turn off the TV, put the dogs to bed and then turn out the lights before changing into my pyjamas and climbing into bed.
Psychotic dogs know this ritual very well, and when I turn off the TV, they come to the door ready to be ushered into their beds.
When I turn off the TV, after about 5 seconds, it makes this very soft clicking sound.
Tonight, I changed the order of my ritual and I turned off the TV before I started doing everything else.
Immediately after that very soft clicking sound that the 'off' TV makes, I heard the shuffling sound of claws upon tiled floor and looked up to see all three dogs standing at the doorway, wagging their tails, waiting for me to usher them into bed.
So now, they are waiting very impatiently for me to finish my blog post and THEN I will confuse them further by filling the water bottles and THEN taking them outside to pee before bed.
I do have a touch of evil in me :D
When I lived in Griffith, my last partner had two Ridgeback X Bull Mastiff hunting dogs, which I inappropriately named Fatty and Splodge.
Butch (my partner) would always park his ute nose first in the driveway, and for ten years, when he opened the gate to the back yard, Fatty and Splodge would hurtle through the gates, run around to the back of the car, where he had opened the tail gate and they would jump enthusiastically into the back of the ute ready to go hunting.
One morning, Butch, uncharacteristically, backed his ute into the driveway so that it was tail end first.
When he opened the gates to the back yard, Fatty and Splodge came hurtling through them, ran around the car and dived enthusiastically onto the bonnet of the ute!
In their state of panic and confusion, their feet couldn't get a grip on the paintwork of the bonnet and they slid onto the windscreen, their legs flailing about madly until they slid or fell off the ute onto the ground.
It was the funniest thing I'd seen in a long time and I laughed until I had tears!
They jumped up onto their feet and shook their heads looking at the front of the ute with dumbfounded expressions on their faces, when Butch called to them from the back of the ute and they bounded back to where they SHOULD have jumped in the first place.
This is a very good lesson on dog training ... it's how dogs learn ... by doing something over and over and over again until it becomes second nature to them.
In this case, it wasn't necessarily a good training strategy, but the method can be put to use for other training situations.
That was such a funny day!
Anyway, I'm glad that I thought of that story, because I couldn't think of anything to write tonight and now I am done!!
Time for the nightly ritual.
Nite all.
