whats in the dish?

This week my mother decided to work a little on "paws up" and leaving things alone.  Some people call it "leave it", my mommy tries to use my name instead to get my attention off of something that it shouldn't be on and then to reward me for paying attention to her instead of that other thing!  that goes for things on the floor, things I'm not supposed to have, stuff like that.

for some reason she decided to use a food dish as part of this exercise.  Boy, was that hard!  usually things in a food dish I get to eat!  But, we tried really hard and think we are on our way.  I can walk past the food dish when its on a chair and sometimes when its on the floor.  and thats with food in it!  my mommy was pretty nice about it, she started really far away and clicked and treated me with delicous cookies from her pocket for looking at the dish and then looking at her!  that  was kind of easy, but got a little harder as we got closer and closer.  my mother says this is great practice for all sort of things, something about working with "distractions".  I keep hearing her talk about wanting to do something called obedience work as well as therapy, she has so many things she wants to do and I just want to run, hike and play! 

we are also working on paws up in a chair, so I get can closer to people for visiting.  last time I was at the vet I sat on a really cool thing called a "scale" and it said I was 65lbs - guess that's to heavy to put my paws on someones lap so we are doing the chair thing.

but how come she lets me get into her lap?  hmmmmmmm