We know of dogs who wear their life jackets any time they come up on deck. In their case, it is because they’ve ended up in the water more than once.

For Honey, we always put her into her life jacket when we’re traveling. But if conditions are calm and it’s very hot, we take it off. We figure the danger from heat stress is greater than the risk of drowning.

In rough conditions, we ALL wear life jackets.

And no, I haven’t seen any issues with her skin. But she’s not prone to skin issues like many goldens are.

Yeah, a big part of Petey calming down will be just getting older. But since he finds jumping on Mike so rewarding, perhaps that should be his reward. Maybe keep him behind a door when Mike gets home. And shut the door if he’s too rambunctious. And if he comes out calmly, he can jump up on Mike (who puts on padding).

Or maybe Mike could arrange to sit down on the couch and invite Petey to come up beside him as a reward.

Good luck.

That’s something Honey and Mr N have in common. She would NEVER jump into the water. But jumping off the boat (sometimes even when it was still moving) t0 make a new friend–now that’s another matter.

We did the traditional mother’s day thing here–scraping woodwork in preparation for varnishing. 🙂

You?

And every dog is so different–as your stories of Maggie and Kobi show. The training/management plans has to be suited to the dog.

Of course, as we all know, even the best training and management doesn’t always work perfectly.

He he, Honey is a literalist. 🙂

But seriously, we broke the cues up because we started training Honey as a puppy. She learned to sit long before she was really capable of any kind of stay. So we just kinda stuck with it.