Monthly Archives: November 2011
Damp Paws
Early Mornings in November
I think the big dogs are enjoying their Rio-free walks. They get to enjoy them for a while longer yet, as even when she’s allowed out, she’ll be heading out on much shorter walks until she’s grown a bit more. Kim or Mollie will chaperone one younger dog each, depending on the day and the time and how cold it is. Kim doesn’t like to go so far in the cold. She had to wear one of her snoods this weekend!
The fog came down for the whole day after our lovely morning stroll though. A little creepy, we were glad to be heading home by the end of it.
Rio 12 Weeks
That left ear was promising trouble even at this stage. It’s dropped into a rose fold at the moment, damn it!
Offering left turns on hand signals now, she’s learning faster than I can come up with new things to do. Our Elephant Trick morphed into “sitting on the box”, which I did not think she would be co-ordinated enough to do (it’s a small box!)
Breathe Easy
So, doing the list of what Rio is doing at 12 weeks actually made me breathe a little easier. I’ve been worried I’m not doing enough with her, but when seeing it all written out I feel like we’re doing ok. She’s only been here 2.5weeks, we’re fitting everything in. Her 14-days waiting for the vaccinations to clear is going to take us just past Hare’n'Hounds November, so I’m dithering a bit over whether to take her. She’ll be 2 days away from her “official” 2 week mark, I don’t know how much of a difference 2 weeks is going to make. I don’t intend to take her indoors anyway, and she’ll be meeting minimal dogs and people (for a show) as I don’t want to overwhelm her (or for her to meet inappropriate dogs and people!)
Dylan worked really well at training this week, super jumping style and lots of confidence, even on the seesaw. After the flyoff at Hare’n'Hounds I decided to take a slightly different approach, on the idea that Dyl does actually know what he should do, and maybe if I carried on as normal it wouldn’t repeat. So we didn’t train it in between Hare’n'Hounds and Tailwaggers, and then we didn’t train it the week after Tailwaggers either. This week was the first time he’s seen it again, and he was fine.
His aframe is looking really kind of lovely right now, I have no idea why. Not complaining, but it’s nice.