The Blue Line

When I first got Morey, I trained him to not leave my office unless he was given permission. This allows Morey to have free reign in my office while allowing me to leave my office door open. Win-win for everyone. In order to help him understand the rules, I put a strip of blue tape across the threshold of my office door to give Morey a visual of where his boundary is. I had a lot of people ask what the blue line meant and most of them were very impressed by the idea of Morey respecting an invisible boundary. To me, this is a simple thing to teach, but it's something that you have to be very diligent about the first few weeks so the dog never crosses the line without permission. It didn't take Morey long to learn it and soon I took the blue tape away.

While we were back home in Indiana, our office moved locations. Our department now has its own suite of offices which has been very nice. I set up my things and got Morey settled and that was that. Morey understood that he wasn't supposed to leave my old office and so he understood the same rules applied to the new office. Wrong! Morey is a wonder dog, but he is a dog and dogs do not generalize well. Expecting Morey to make the connection of boundary training from one office to another was unrealistic in my part. The first day that he ran out of my office and down the hall I realized my mistake. So, once again I have a blue line of tape across my door and am answering questions about boundary training. And, once again, I am reminded that when it comes to dog training, I am usually the one making the mistakes, not the dog!