Welcome to this week’s edition of Follow-Up Friday, the post where I highlight reader’s comments, answer questions and generally just wrap up my week.

You Make Me Smile – June 21, 2015

Rebekah said, “My dogs don’t give up until each bit of goodness is gone.”

Delilah will not either! She will hand you a seemingly empty Kong, but when you smack it on your hand, a tiny bit of something will fall out!”

Jan said, “My dogs have learned to get up as high as they can and bounce the Kong off the floor to get stuff to fall out.”

Sampson will do that sometimes as well, I guess it just depends on his mood and how much he actually wants what’s in the Kong.

Jackie Bouchard said, “Pineapple in the Kong? Rita would look at me like I was insane if I put fruit in her Kong. I think she’s part cat. Fruit (and most veggies) are NOT on her menu.”

Have you ever tried pineapple? She might actually like it. 🙂 So what do you put in her Kong?

Meagan and Merlin said, “Merlin has a treat ball that he rolls around. If it gets stuck, he whines for help. Once Merlin rolled his treat ball into his ceramic food bowl that hard it smashed and then he growled at the broken pieces lol.”

Oh my goodness, I would have laughed like crazy at that.

Jenna Mark “Husky-Crazed” Drady said, “Koda will stare at the door knob on the front door when he needs to pee. LOL I think he is trying to “use the force” hahaha!”

Hahaha he is like Sampson with his Kong!

2 Brown Dawgs said, “LOL he has you well trained.”

He sure does! And Hubby will help him out too. LOL

Team Sampson – #MultiPetMania

Lauren Miller (ZoePhee) said, “Go Team Sampson! 😀 That’s so cute! I come up with weird stuff, too. Like my recall somehow became “this way!”…There’s an awesome kikopup video for training dogs to not mug the treat hand if you’re interested, I can share it with you! :-)”

I’m glad to discover that I am not the only one that comes up with random sayings for commands! And yes please! Please share the video and thank you very much (and I’m sure my fingers will that you too!)

Paved by Paw Prints said, “Delilah actually walks beautifully on a lead! It was too cute when Sampson joined in!! I don’t have the problem of training multiple dogs, it sounds a little difficult! ”

She walks beautifully on the lead in the house. In. The. House. Outside she dreams of being a sled dog.

Jan K said, “I think you’re pretty good at training multiple pets, because in that video you actually had two dogs heeling, without even trying for that!…BTW, I’m running into the same treat motivation problem when trying to teach Luke to put his toys away. He won’t even pick a toy up if he knows I have a treat (or that they’re even nearby), he just wants the treat.”

LOL Sampson was so smooth in that video, wasn’t he? He just looked and thought, “Hey, there might be something in this for me.” As for Luke, what do you suppose the solution is? Do you think maybe putting the treats in a little dish near by and then reaching into the dish would work?

Monika said, “I love it-Team Sampson! That video was so priceless, I snorted water over my keyboard.”

Bwa ha ha, did you need a new keyboard? (At least you didn’t inhale crackers or something!)

Jan said, “Team Misty here…I rely a lot on sibling rivalry when training multiple dogs. The Poodles catch on faster than the dogs so it motivates the dogs to focus more. Also the Poodles model certain behaviors and the dogs follow them.”

That’s awesome. Do you rent them out?

Sand Spring Chesapeakes asked, “Did Sampson really give you a high five cuz he couldn’t stand Delilah taking so long?”

He sure the hell did. I wish I’d had THAT on video!

KB said, “Outdoors is waaay harder. Both dogs are “reactive” to other hikers when they’re on leash. Shyla’s reaction is fear and R’s reaction is barking. So, I make an arc around the other hiker that keeps both dogs outside their “threshold” zone for their reactions. I’ve been doing this consistently for about 8 months, and it’s really worked! We can now walk right past many hikers without cowering from Shyla or barking from R! I consider that a victory in my small world 😉…

I’ve blurted out some funny commands too. In the kitchen, “leave it” has been replaced by “snoots ahoy”. I have no idea where in my brain that one came from!!!”

That’s a great way to handle reactivity. Can you get closer to the hikers now, or do you still need to maintain a healthy distance? AND snoots ahoy? I love it~

Jen Gabbard said, “Every single fenced dog in my neighborhood has major barrier frustration and it makes me want to shit my pants as well.. ”

It can be oh so frustrating. I’m lucky in the fact that only the dogs in the e-fence are in the front of the yard. The rest of the dogs are in the back and the fences are set far back, so it’s rarely a problem, but damn, those e-fence dogs can really startle a person. Once, one of them snuck up and all of a sudden I heard heavy panting behind me. Tell me that wouldn’t scare you! LOL

Wrapping up Engagement

There really is a whole lot that can add to engagement, after writing the posts about this and chatting with you all, I sort of wish I’d offered it as a full on session.

Weliveinaflat said, “I used to blog maybe 4-5 days a week when I was new, just to create that bump in traffic that needs to help drive the SEO. Now that the SEO is pretty on track, I’m good to cut back without seeing a decrease in blog traffic. Now that I’m only doing about 1-2 posts a week, it just frees up my time for the engagement piece. Largely that does happen on social media and Instagram, because these come in bite size nuggets and are very visual and shareable/taggable, it’s just easier to engage with new friends that way. I agree that comments on the blog is still important, but somehow, at least locally, people tend to stalk blogs rather than comment on blogs”

That’s awesome that you’ve found the sweet spot. I think what your talking about regarding social media is considered micro-blogging. I’ve thought about maybe trying small chunks of it on Facebook. I am on Instagram but mostly use my camera for pictures so I rarely post there.

Lauren Miller asked, “How do you feel about blog hops that have a break in them? I always try to put breaks in my post so only the main photo and a bit of text shows through and you have to click to get to the blog hop, that way readers who are not interested in them don’t have to see the full link list without clicking? If that makes sense?”

Personally, I like it, and if you like it and your readers like it, then it’s a win-win.

Steven asked, “Do you look at your blogs Google Analytics to see which posts get the most views, most time spent reading etc – just interested in your opinion.”

True confession Steven. I have looked at my GA but I can never remember how I signed up for it, so when I do find it, it’s pure luck. I’m really not very good with the technical side of blogging at all.

2 Brown Dawgs said, “I probably should have added to my comment that it helps to add a new post to the hop and not just recycle a post for the sake of joining the hop. People enjoy new content and that is a huge way to engage the reader.”

You are right there.

Pamela said, “If you discover the secret to writing shareable posts, I’d love to see it. Everything I think will capture lots of traffic doesn’t and I’m very surprised by what does.”

It is the same with me, the posts I often think will get the most engagement or shares, is often the ones that don’t.

Emma said, “We find commenting and responding to comments is really important for us and people really like it. As for what we post, sometimes the posts we can’t wait to publish turn out to be bombs, and others we almost delete because they are so bad are a huge hit.”

I think it is different for everyone and if that is what your readers like, that’s awesome And I am with you on the bombs, I have no idea sometimes.

Jan K said, “I used to reply to all of my comments, but I wondered how many people ever really saw the replies. So when I re-did my blog, I had it set up so that people get an email when I reply to them. But that means I no longer reply to every comment because I don’t want people to get an email for something like just thanking them for their nice comment (unless it’s someone new to my blog, and I’m thanking them for coming by)… I think that has made things easier for me…it was hard to keep up with replying to every comment (it amazes me that blogs like Emma’s are able to do it!), now that I get more than I did before… I will go back to a blog if I’ve asked a question in their comments. If they don’t reply to me in some way, that really turns me off.”

I do like that feature Jan. There are a couple of other blogs that use it as well and I think it’s great.

Monika said, “You took the question right off my lips! How DO you engage readers on social media without just pasting links to blog posts? Most of the time I feel extremely lucky just to get a blog post written, let alone work Facebook or Twitter. I realize we all get the same 24 hours a day, but I feel like I need staff to handle social media since Sam points out that he has no thumbs and can’t help.”

I’m not really sure, but I’m going to start putting something like this in my posts. “Did you enjoy this post? Did it make you smile or think? If so, would you consider sharing it on your social media?

What do you think?

That’s it for me folks. Have a wonderful weekend!