I am making two New Year’s Resolutions for my dogs, and I invite you to make your own versions of these.

1. To appreciate and cherish my dogs every single day.

2. To do more fun things with them, and to work training into that.

Now, people don’t always keep their resolutions, and of course I am no different than anyone! But I do have an advantage… I used to teach time management classes, and so I am not just making resolutions, I am also making plans.

Actually I already do #1, but I want to be sure to express my love fully to our dogs.  Recently our Rottweiler Lola has developed a habit that helps with this. When she hurt a front paw a few months ago, I got down on the floor with her each evening and gave her a  massage, specially focusing on both front legs — the one she wasn’t using much and the one that had extra work to do as a result.

Well, after about three days, she had stopped limping. As my husband and I sat watching television, I didn’t have dog massage on my mind. But Lola got up from her bed and came and sat directly in front of me. She stared intently into my eyes.

I got the point… and so began a regular habit of giving both dogs massages every evening. I plan to keep this up throughout the new year. Some evenings more, some less, no doubt.  I think I will pull out my excellent DVD on Bodywork for Dogs — that link goes to my description of it.

More Dog Training… in the Datebook!

My dogs are generally well enough trained that when I get busy, I don’t always keep up with training new things. But we all enjoy it so much when I do, that this year I am putting into my datebook for Saturdays:  SOMETHING with the DOGS! Since I use a computer program for keeping track of things, it just took me a moment to write it in all 52 times.

Actually, I sometimes recommend that if you get my weekly newsletter which comes out on Tuesday mornings, that you can use that as a reminder to do SOMETHING with your DOGS.

Whatever you do, happy new year!

And here’s a fun video from youtube that may inspire your training:

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