Teaching Your Dog to Do Nothing - Scriabin Prelude for Two Hands Op. 11 No. 21

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[Music]

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Welcome to episode four of My Zen Pet. The first podcast with music, for pets and their people.

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Hi, I'm Lisa Spector, your pet coming Maestro.

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I'm going to play on my piano for your pets and for you a Scriabin prelude for two hands. And I'll get to that in a moment.

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But first, a very simple training tip.

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Years ago, I went to a seminar, taught by a trainer who worked with shelter, dogs, helping them transition from the shelter into the home environment.

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She said something so simple, but it was so profound that it stuck with me all these years.

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We bring our dogs home and most of the time they're actually spent doing nothing. And it's our job to teach them how to do nothing.

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Gina, my Labrador, was raised to be a guide dog. She's a career change from guide dogs for the blind, where I used to be a volunteer puppy raiser.

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And they taught her when she was a puppy, go to your bed and go to your bed means to go to your bed, lay down, and basically do nothing.

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It's so ingrained in her that if she walks into a home without a dog bed, she'll find any place to settle that resembles a dog bed.

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She'll find a kitchen mat, a bathmat, a hand-wash. It doesn't matter how small it is, but she'll know that's when it's time to settle.

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Well, the music I'm playing for you is a very good accompaniment to teaching dogs to do nothing because it's more, it's a little bit of K9 enrichment for them while they're doing nothing.

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So here's some more musical canine enrichment.

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In episode three, I played a scrub in prelude for left-hand only, Scriabin, a Russian composer and he wrote this in the late 1800s. This one is a Schriban prelude for two hands Opus, 11 number 21. He wrote 24 of these preludes and Opus 11.

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Don't let the words fool you it's really simple. Opus just means a chronological listing of a composer's work. So Opus 11 tells you it was written pretty early in his composition career.

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Enjoy with your pets at home.