Week 19 - Quella gets the bus

We decided to give the noisy train exercise a miss for this week, and we took some bus rides instead, although Quella has travelled by bus when she was younger, and she was still being carried out and about. She has also travelled on a bus while out walking, but that was from the bus terminus, and the bus was stationary, and not quite as off putting as a large bus pulling up in front of a small puppy, with air brakes engaging. All in all, quite a challenge for a little one. So while waiting at the bus stop I wasn't sure what to expect from Quella. When the bus arrived I checked her body language, to make sure her tail was still wagging, and her hackles weren’t raised, and she did look relaxed, however she couldn't make up her mind whether to get on the bus or not, so being a greedy Labrador, I then threw a treat onto the bus, and she very quickly obliged by scrambling onto the bus after the treat. We were only going on a short journey to start with, and I was amazed at how quickly she settled, and after sitting by my feet for a while, she then decided to  lay down, nice and relaxed, even though she must have felt all the vibrations on the floor of the bus, so I was very pleased with her. I will increase the length of the journey gradually.
As I mentioned in my introduction, I have an African Grey parrot called Cleopatra, who is a very good talker, but also does a lot of mimicking of sounds. The one thing she does mimic is the sound of the whistle that I blow three times, as the signal for my puppy to eat the food that I have put down, except she doesn't just confine it to puppy meal time she does it several times during the day. It does confuse the puppy initially, but after a couple of days they realise where the sound is coming from. If I am boarding a Guide Dog puppy that doesn't know about Cleopatra's habit, I have known them to come into the kitchen thinking it is mealtime, so they have to settle for a treat instead, but even they very quickly discover that Cleopatra is the culprit.