Is Jake Finished?

Interesting thing today in Tika's class. When Tika took off at the end of a run to go posture at the corner of the field where cats and squirrels often lurk, and didn't come back even when called, I escorted her to the car (note, though, that I actually got hold of her without her taking off all over the place to avoid me. Torn between rewarding that and not rewarding it because it's still part of the taking off bit...) and took Jake out instead. I just played with Jake, had him do some tricks for goodies, tossed a frisbee a short way--and every time I'd stop to pet him, he hurried over to the gate to go back out to the car.

Very odd. Like he didn't want to be out there doing stuff. Come to think of it, he was doing some of that in his class last week, too, but I attributed that to my attempts the last few weeks (at intructors' insistence) to get him to play without food rewards at beginning and end of runs.

Maybe he is ready for retirement. How do I know? How do I know?

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