Moku's Very Busy Wednesday

Liz R. Kover
Sep 30, 2015
4 min read

Daily CHALLENGE & ACTiViTY Summary

Dog’s name: Moku

Date: Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Physical Fitness

Moku killed his workout today! It all started when I picked him up this morning, and he LEAPT into the backseat of the car! We’ve been working on this since last week, and today was the first day he made it (relatively ;) smoothly in one good jump! Whew, that was exciting!

Next, we went farther and faster than we’ve gone thus far on the treadmill! We surpassed the mile mark, at an average speed of 2.7 mph. For the bulk of the time we were up around 3.1 mph. So Moku pretty much kept up a jog the entire 23 minutes! After that, we jumped into the pool, and Moku played hilariously with “the sinking ball”. He and Clancy did some running around the yard as well. He seemed to have lots of energy today, which was great! (He then took a nice, long nap and snored into the afternoon, while I worked on the computer.

Cognitive Fitness

Today, we completed the Memory section of the Dognition.com games. While I attempted to capture the activity on video, it is always a bit difficult to tell what’s going on…and probably also not easy to deal with all the weird camera angles. At any rate, the game was to see if Moku would remember under which cup I had hid the chicken, after intervals of 1 minute, 1:30, 2 minutes, and 2:30. He got the first two correct, but not the last two. This makes sense to me, because Moku does seem to have somewhat of a short attention span (don’t we all?). I wonder how much of that he will grow out of as he matures into a grown-up dog. Either way, the exercise was fun, and it’s always neat to think that we are contributing to a growing body of research as part of a massive pool of “Citizen Scientists”, testing their dogs at home and recording the results on the website! Very cool stuff!

Social Fitness

Once again, Moky made me so proud in this category today. Being the sweet, silly, light-hearted ball of chocolate labbie that he is, Moku (once again) helped an anxious dog feel at ease.

Every other Thursday, the woman who cleans for us, Olivia, comes to the house; sometimes she brings one of her kids, and today she brought her daughter, Anisa. Clancy typically hides out in my room while they are doing their business about the house, and today was no exception, until about ten minutes before the ladies were finished and ready to leave. Anisa really wanted to pet Clancy, so I coaxed him into the living room to be with us. I was surprised he even got that far, and laid down across from Anisa as she got low to him on the floor. Keep in mind, this is a dog who, only a year ago, would’ve frozen in fear and lost control of his bowels had he been in the same situation! He has come SO FAR, and watching him continue to conquer his fear is continually amazing and inspiring.

Anyway, he was still quite nervous, until Mr. Bear came bounding into the room from outside after he had finished his bathroom break. As you’ll see in the video, Moku’s energy – as usual – was just what the room needed to balance out the tension (for both Clancy and Anisa). Moku frolicked around, totally oblivious to the fact that his crazily happy tail was whipping everyone as he passed.

It’s tricky to explain, and perhaps you “had to be there” to fully experience what I’m describing. But either way, Moku’s sweetness and happy-go-lucky lab demeanor is, quite simply, healing. And whether he is fully aware of it or not, on some level, I believe Moku feels a responsibility to help others feel more at ease. And he does his job well.

Emotional Fitness

To my mind, Moku’s jumps into the car, (twice this morning, and once this evening when I took him home), represented a HUGE emotional breakthrough. The first day Moku had to deal with getting ALL the way up up into the car in one swift motion was last Wednesday. The night before, I had picked up a wheelchair to use in training with my mobility service dog, and was now storing it in the space behind the driver’s seat. Because of its size, it spills over a bit into the other floorboard area (behind the passenger’s seat), so really Moku has had no choice but to take this leap – quite literally. Until yesterday evening, Moku had struggled terribly to get into the backseat of my little Honda Fit. He would pull away, whine, put one or two paws up and then turn around, anything to avoid putting forth the effort to get into the car. I KNEW he was physically capable of doing it, and felt he absolutely should do it, as it’s very low to the ground, and adds a little strength training to his days. Watching him conquer it today, and feel quite proud of himself (as I was of him!), I believe he simply didn’t think he could do it. But then he realized I wouldn’t accept anything less than his very best effort. And once he came to terms with that, he just…DID IT! THIS…was the most exciting part of our day!

Primal Fitness

Moku swam and retrieved items, sniffed every inch of the backyard, and ran alongside me (on the treadmill), where we got locked into that “zone” of primal connectivity two animals enter when they run side by side. Little else in life feels better, if you ask me.