21 Weeks

Posted on January 14, 2012 by Leanne

I have been trying to get Rio to some busier places this week, hence our park trips and village walks. It’s a bit difficult as due to our walking locations, social night-time walks feel too uncomfortably unsafe (even if they’re perfectly safe), so we’re limited to daylight strolls. Sadly, not many people around during the day compared to evening or early morning, and as flyball training was cancelled last week we missed our social weekend too. I’m hoping Rio can come join me at agility on Tuesday for some socialisation but it takes pre-planning as I need to help set up and get Emma to take the Foundation class.

We’re working on shaping a nose-touch (or ideally mouth-grab) behaviour at the moment. Rio loves mouthing people or dogs (yes, need to stop that!) but she has a very strong preference for her paws when we’re shaping with objects. Thanks to some help from Cat (DogRadical) and Vicki (Giruff) we’re making good progress but it’s definitely the most challenging thing we’ve done so far as it’s not really working with her natural inclinations.

Wait training is ongoing, REA is ongoing, but both looking good. Need to start her on the chute for flyball sometime this month.

Almost all her baby teeth have gone, the last few molars went this week. Ears are all over the place, I love watching puppy ears change. Currently we seem to have drop ears in a morning and then by evening we’re back to airplane, but this week the drop ears have been around a lot more. Maybe she will have proper Aussie ears?!

Rio also has a tiny scab just to the right of her nose at the moment, which I have little sympathy for. I accidentally dropped a peice of pasta on Kim, which bounced and landed next to her paw. Rio ran over, shoulder barging Kim out of the way to get to it. Wrong move! Kim did not approve and told her emphatically so. Kim didn’t actually mean to catch her but Rio panicked and tried to reverse unexpectedly. Kim was apologetic to everyone after all the screaming and Rio has reverted to super-respectful behaviour, and I am a terrible owner because I’m not at all sympathetic. They’ll all survive!

Trips to the Park

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Leanne

We’ve been venturing further afield this week down to the big Meltham Hall park. Apparently it’s not called that any more, but whatever, it is.

This means 15mins of on-lead road walking to get there and back, which is definitely something we need to work on. All my dogs pull on the lead, I’m rubbish at training them not to. Mainly because we never have to walk anywhere on lead, so it seems like a pointless kind of skill. I’m trying to be better with Rio and teach her not to pull, we’re about 60% there but we have relapses.

We’re mainly hitting the park as there is a big children’s playground and a duck pond, so lots of small children running wild and free. So far we’ve only managed to say hi to shy and very small children, which Rio doesn’t have a problem with, but it’s still good practise.

We have also met a very over-exuberant Weimaraner who flattened her a couple of times, and I wish I’d had Kim with me on that occasion as it might have learnt some manners. Sadly we also met an intolerant Bichon as well on that walk, not a successful day. I don’t mind people having nervous dogs – I’ve got one! – but they need to be aware of it and act accordingly. Encouraging my puppy to come closer so you can have a cuddle when you have a nervous dog on a lead isn’t good for my dog or yours.

Rio is slowly coming around to the idea that ducks aren’t scary too. We’ll see if she can get over that by the end of the week!

17 Weeks

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Leanne

Nearly 18 weeks, really.

Not so many tricks these past 2 weeks, mostly house manners and walk manners and visiting manners. I finally knuckled down and started working properly on REA, I’ve been a bit wary as I haven’t shaped it before and I was struggling to mark the right things. Thought about it without Rio, and then attempted to put the plan into action. It took us four sessions to get a rear foot target on the box, but they were short sessions (30s – 5mins) over the course of the day. She was getting slightly frustrated by the third session, but I think that was partly because she had an idea of what I was clicking for but she couldn’t figure out how to get her legs to do that on purpose.

I do love me that girl attitude though, Kim and Rio get pissy and start huffing under their breath and frowning at me, but they keep pushing and pushing until they get what they want. Dylan just goes into repeat-cycle of offering everything he already knows. It’s such a slooooow process for him to problem solve.

Sit, paw, both-paws, down, dead, left, go-round are all on command, and so is “go to bed”. She knows Ready and Go, recall is pretty awesome, Leave-it is also pretty good.

Getting lots of exposure to new things as the Christmas stuff has gone up, routine has been disrupted a lot this week as people are coming and going a lot more than usual with shopping etc. Different visitors, parcels delivered, later nights. All going fine.

She has grown some serious legs this week too. She’s still hovering at around 16″, lots of growing left to do yet though.

Early Mornings in November

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Leanne

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.

Hare’n'Hounds October Halloween

Posted on November 13, 2011 by Leanne

Kim had a great run first thing in the Combined 1-7 Jumping, a course with just jumps (no tunnels/weaves), so it was a pure speed kind of course. She finished 7th, I think 4/5s off the winners but she was the top Grade 6 by 8 seconds or something ridiculous. That was fun, but frustrating, as I ended up pulling her from the only Graded class of the day as I thought her jumping looked off mid-way through.

I’m not going to keep her going just for the sake of one more win, but it really would be nice for her to reach Grade 7 before she retires. She is skipping the next few months as I don’t trust the weather to stay nice enough for her, but Kim has always preferred running indoors so we’ll see if we can fit in a few more shows before the summer season starts up again.

Dylan had a hesitant run in his first class, an ok run in his second, and then was just beautiful in his last three. His jumping was super, really smooth and no silly stuttering around. We only got one clear, in the G5-7 Jumping, which was in the same ring as Kim’s earlier C1-7, so no tunnels/weaves and a fairly fast, open course. We were well out of the placings but it was a nice run with a moment where I got lost, and we were only 2s off the pace. I’m pretty pleased with that, Dylan and I are at our weakest on these kind of just-jumping fast courses, and this was our first Grade 6 show.

We had a horrible flyoff on the seesaw in the first run of the day, which I was really very surprised about – Dylan does not do flyoffs! I missed walking the course because I was too lazy to get out of the car, and we were running a really nice clear until the second to last obstacle (seesaw). Of course, Kim was in that ring later and she also flew it, so I’m tempted to blame the equipment. I did see a lot of other dogs do the same, clearly surprisingly themselves for the most part.

We had a super tough 6-7 Agility for our first proper G6 class too, a short spaced jump-seesaw line where you had to pull off the seesaw to hit a 120 degree weave entry to double back on yourself (I will try and get a course plan up). We avoided the seesaw and got the entry, but we messed up later on. It did remind me that running G6 with Dylan is actually going to be fun, he has all the training to do these harder courses and I love the handling challenges.