Rainy Days

Although the official rainy season is over in Tokyo, it has been raining heavily every day for the past few days, and will continue to rain all next week. Both Azuki and I detest rainy days. For Azuki, she is stuck at home and cannot go out to play. For me, I am stuck at home with a bored, hyperactive puppy.

I bought Azuki a rain coat so we can still go out for short walks when the rain isn't so bad. She is not a big fan of the rain coat, but I am even less a fan of walking her in the rain with an umbrella in my hand, leash and bag in another, bending down and trying to pick up her poop, all at the same time.

The other day when it rained HARD and we couldn't go out during the day, I had to come up with innovative ways to entertain her. One thing I have always wanted to do was to teach her how to play dead. But Azuki is a strong-willed pup and she does not like to roll on her side or roll over on command--she only does it ON HER TERMS, like when she wants a belly rub. Even with treats, it was really really hard to convince her why she should roll to her side. So the whole exercise basically went like this:

1. I have her do a "down"
2. I use my hand to make the gesture of a gun, and yell: "Bang bang!" Except I do it in the way Japanese people imitate gun shots, which sounds almost French: "Biang Biang!"
2. Then, I hold the food close to her nose so she can smell it, then tries to manipulate her head so her body rolls over to the side
3. That technique doesn't work because she keeps trying to get up and get the treat, so I give up and just manually roll her over to her side, hold her down, and give her the treat and a very very enthusiastic "Good girl, Biang Biang, Good girl!"
4. I repeat the idiotic exercise over and over again.

When I showed Matt this new trick at home later that night, he almost died of laughter, "She is not doing it! You are just turning her over!"

"Yeah but this is the only way to show her what I want her to do!" I said defensively.

Azuki turned out to be a bright student, and after a few more times, she started to do it on her own. Except when she rolls to her side, she doesn't stay still like she is suppose to, but wiggles all 4 legs in the air because she is trying to get at the treat. So instead of "play dead", it's more like "play half dead injured struggling to stay alive."

But either way, I am already proud of what we were able to accomplish.

I think Azuki is well on her way to becoming a movie star ;)