Our Favorite Season: Boat!

For the average human, when you ask what their favorite season is, they will most likely say: “winter, spring, summer, or fall,” but we like to say “boat”! It’s the best time of the year and spans over 3 of our favorite “regular” seasons-spring, summer, AND fall.

It also gets us off of our phones and outside playing with Brodie more! (And fishing more too!)

Brodie is completely at home out on the water, in the water, pretty much anything to do with water (except maybe getting sprayed with the hose…), that boat season is his FAVORITE time of the year! Even more this year since we upgraded to a pontoon with lots of room to play out on the water! He’s lucky he was rescued into a family that lives on a lake!

One of the greatest challenges during boat season last year was Brodie’s fear of fishing poles…a little difficult when your dad is a fisherman who loves to fish EVERY time he’s out on the lake.

It took a LOT of training, counter conditioning, and game playing, BUT Dan finally got Brodie relatively comfortable around the fishing poles at the end of last season. But with contiued work all winter, now Brodie not only gets excited when it comes out, but he literally JUMPS when it’s casted out! (May or may not be the CUTEST thing a dog has done when someone is fishing!)

Games and positive reinforcement helped a ton when we were working with Brodie on his comfort level around them. Dan came up with the idea of tying a toy to the end of the fishing line to help Brodie learn that the fishing pole wasn’t there to hurt time (unintentionally creating a make-shift flirt pole type thing)! This idea turned it all around for Brodie and the fishing poles! Does he now try and get the lure at the end of the line? Yes. But is he also comfortable and relaxed around it? Also yes!