Wally's Art Lesson 2: Amarillo means Yellow

The weather was a bit better (at least it was dry) so we did go out for a long walk and do some retrieving. Then we did a little more training inside and had lunch. 

The highlight for today, though, was starting work on the second of his two colors, yellow, also known as "amarillo" in Spanish. Since this was the introduction, we pretty much duplicated the same process as we did for introducing the blue color. Wally was again eager, after waking up from his nap. He also was thrown off a little because I didn't say "azul" so he was like "okay, what is this and what are we doing?" I think the combination of the interrupted nap and the change up caused him to get off to a slower start.

I also wonder if the yellow card was a little harder for him to see, at least with the lighting in the room.

When we got to the point where I put the card in various places and he has to look around to find it and touch it, he was looking a little more lost than with the blue card. That was interesting to see. Sometimes, he would pass right over it, as if he was looking for something else. I wonder if maybe he was still thinking about the blue card?

He did eventually find it and didn't get discouraged (and I offered no more help than saying "amarillo" again. I did use a different location this time, putting the card on top of the bed. There were a couple other of his toys up there two, and he almost picked up his raindrop squeaky toy, but then corrected himself to get the yellow card instead.

I moved the pace of the training faster than it was with the start of introducing the blue card. I figured that the overall exercise was basically the same and it would help him learn to start to look/search more quickly for the color and also to make a bigger deal out of the whole exercise - putting something of a sense of urgency in the mix.

After the exercise, he went to resume his nap, which he extended for three hours. After that, we went out for our pre-dinner walk. This walk was a looooooong walk as it's time to get back into the swing of longer walks with Spring being here and all - and before the oppressive summer heat that will surely invade in a few months.

Not sure what we'll end up doing tomorrow. I will likely save more work on "amarillo" for All-Positive Monday V. Something will come to us. Usually does - either from just thinking of something, or a "teachable moment" coming up during the day.