teaching dog to count

is maynard, the dog sick or just bored? he doesn’t want to eat his food. has he gotten picky or bored with the same food every day? brought some of the food to the park and gave it to other hungry dogs as “cookie” in front of him, and then he liked it better and ate it at home. but that only worked for a little while. i put rice in it. that worked for a while. i put chicken soup in, also worked for a while. then i gave him soup from boullion cubes, which he ate a few times but then was hesitant again. unfortunately, i didn’t taste the boullion cube stock before i fed it to him. he didn’t seem to like it. finally after days of him rejecting it i tasted the stock. it was REALLY SALTY. oops. just like a baby, you should taste test the food before you give it to them. then we figured out that he actually wanted to work for it. if we made him do his tricks to get a reward of one piece of food, he got warmed up and then was starving and gobbled it down. has he turned into a french dog, who needs to have an appetizer before his main course? we’re also afraid he might be sick. last year, we went one afternoon to lincoln, he got a tick and within 2 weeks he was sick. actually they said he had 3 tick borne illnesses. when he couldn’t come with us last summer, he went back to lincoln. we were so grateful to our friends who took him in, but he was exposed to lots of ticks. after a few days in france, we even found a lincoln tick on him! don’t know how they cope over there. anyway, i’ve had him tested again and all it says is that he has been exposed to lyme disease and his levels are exactly what they were 3 months ago. maybe he’s bored. he can’t see out the windows here, so we put ½ of his plastic crate, upside down as a bench under the window for him to look out. he does sit there sometimes watching the people and dogs on the street. no squirrels here in paris. poor thing must miss them. they were his favorite pastime in belmont. he’d sit there for hours looking out the door at them. so i think he needs intellectual stimulation. i decided i should teach him how to count. we’re starting with one and two. at first he seemed to get it quickly. but he went away to camp for a week and forgot everything. we’re back at it, but he doesn’t seem to catch on. we have these colored stone eggs that we bought in italy. i put one on one corner of the rug and two on the other. i say “go to ONE” and point to it (he knows the command “move”). he’ll go. i say “go to TWO” and point to the 2 eggs. suffice it to say, progress is slow.

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