Taz's hiking adventure

[SissyT213]

As you all know I adopted a basenji/terrier mix named Taz back in early November. I have been working diligently on Taz's training and he is really picking things up. He is a stubborn little b, as he is always trying to find a way around the rules. He now sits automatically when he gets his leash put on, before we go through a door, in or out, he knows what off means (making him get down from the chair when I want to sit down) and he knows the down command, He is walking great on a leash as long as I reign him in and make him walk properly, but likes to pull when left to sniff and smell everything. He sits when waiting to cross the street with me. He does wonderful in all those situations. However I was worried about his off leash recall as I have never had him off leash in an area that was not fenced in and even then his recall leaves a lot to be desired. I have been working on him with a whistle recall and it works sometimes when he knows he is going to get a cookie, or when he is not interested in something else. So going on a long 3 to 4 mile hike, I didn't trust letting him off leash in the woods on the trail. I have been hiking with him for the majority of the time I have had him as my bf and I love to take long hikes with the dogs out on the trails. We usually use a two dog coupler to attach the dogs together and let them loose on the trails and my golden retriever Levi will lead the way down the trails ahead of us, but will stop a short distance away from us to wait, because he is my service dog he won't go very far from me. Well to make a longer story a little shorter, I decided the other day after seeing Taz's response to being outside without a leash one day by accident sticking by my side and not running off, that I would test him out on the trails. I attached his leash to him and let it trail along behind him, so I could step on it if I needed to, to catch him, and let him go. Not too worried but watchfull of him, I started walking down the trail and he would run down the trail with Levi for a little bit then stop and look back and wait for me to catch up. If he got sidetracked on the trail by a smell I would just keep walking and let him sniff, but when I got too far ahead for my comfort I would whistle for him and he would come running up the path behind me sounding like a miniature horse. I was able to hike the entire trail with him basically off leash and he stuck to me like glue. I am so proud of him! I feel like our bond has finally developed wholely. He also had his first snow experience as well as his second and I have a new coat for him which he fought me tooth and nail to put it on the first time (had to give him a handfull of cookies to get him to sit still, lol), and now he knows that putting on the coat is a good thing so as soon as I bring out the coat he sits right in front of me and lets me put the coat on with no problem, because he loves the snow, and that has been the only times I have needed to put the coat on him since our weather here has been so mild. Needless to say my experience with him has been mixed with good and bad times (like a chewed up cell phone, but it seems that the good times are far out weighing the bad times by a wide margin.