20 Weeks

Posted on January 7, 2012 by Leanne

20 weeks?! How did that happen? Rio continues to be fun and chirpy and naughty and noisy. She’s about 16-17″ tall and 13.30kg. Her puppy fluff is slowly mutating into sleek adult fur, which basically means she has a darker stripe down her back about 4″ in width.

She’s still not very comfortable with children but there is only so much I can do about that as I don’t meet children very often!

She is getting better at being left alone. I decided we were pandering a little too much to her whims; we had been letting her out of her crate whenever she asked to go outside to toilet, but I figured we needed to start getting her to hold it as I had a feeling she was using the asking-to-go-out as an excuse just to get out her crate. Two minor tantrums, no accidents and suddenly she can hold it all night and can stay in her crate for 2-3hours whilst I go out. Amazing!

Dylan and I got back to agility training this week after the Christmas break. I needed an easy week back to see where I was at (not very fit/dying after 10mins springs to mind) but I also wanted to experiment with working on Dylan’s jumping when I wasn’t moving. I’ve read recently about ETS dogs who improve when there is a lack of handler motion so they can focus on jumping only, rather than getting distracted by running handlers. Dylan doesn’t have ETS but it seemed like it might be good to try, and it did help. It’s not a naturally comfortable handling style for me (Kim always always wants me to race her) and there are times when I need to run to get into position, but on more complex sequences I need to look at reducing my forward motion.

Priorities

Posted on December 30, 2011 by Leanne

Been reading lots of interesting blog posts about all the focussed training people are doing with their puppies. I haven’t been, but I’m actually happy with that. I’ve been much more interested in getting Rio to explore the world and get as much exposure to different people, dogs, and environments, and teaching her how to react and recover. So far so good!

We do need to get out and do a bit more training elsewhere though, although it isn’t something I foresee being a problem. Rio is always ready to tug wherever we are, and will offer her tricks for treats if she thinks there’s half a chance of getting some food. I’ve never known a puppy so into both food and toys, it’s weird being able to switch so easily between them! Her favourite toy is a proper sheepskin or fleece tug, but I really want to keep that in it’s current status as Best Toy Ever, so we only use it once a week for restrained recalls. We tug with other toys in the meantime.

She’s teething at the moment and apparently this is not an issue, she spits them out and then carries on with whatever she was doing. Dylan had a tendency to bleed everywhere. It probably helps that she loves a frozen Kong or icecubes which is numbing her gums, Kim did too. Dylan didn’t, icecubes were far too cold (he was a summer puppy!). He likes them now though and hoovers up around Rio as she chews.

My big priority over the holidays was REA and waits, both looking pretty nice right now. She’s targeting a biscuit tin with either rear foot (I’m rewarding attempts to target too at the moment) and I’m really pleased with progress. Waits are also looking nice, she’ll hold in a sit for 15-20s whilst I move 5-6ft away. I’m sticking with my policy of not setting her up to fail, there’s no point in asking her for a 60s wait while I move to the other end of the room. Likewise if we’re on walks, I don’t recall her if she’s clearly not going to come back. Not in a “omg Rio is running in the opposite direction after a squirrel” kind of not coming back, but if she pauses to sniff at something, I’ll wait until she’s moved on before calling her. So far so good, she doesn’t argue about recalls.

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.

More Day Trips

Posted on December 17, 2011 by Leanne

It’s another edition of My Puppy Is Amazing … although I’m not sure I can take credit, she’s just really awesome all on her own. We had a wander around the village yesterday for the first time in a couple of weeks, she wasn’t at all bothered. A bit perturbed by the occasional farm truck but quick to recover. We then waited at the bus stop and caught the bus home, which apparently wasn’t scary at all. Huh.

Amused and a bit sad at how many people clearly wanted to come and say hi to Ribean, but couldn’t bring themselves to actually do so. I think this is a British thing, being afraid to ask if we can pet an adorably fluffly puppy. Rio tried very hard with some people to make them like her, she wriggled up and when they ignored her or just smiled at her, she has the good attitude of “your loss”, which I agree with.

Lots of work on waits this week, as I suddenly realised we hadn’t really done anything on them at all, apart from basic impulse control stuff. So far so good, but it’s soo boring to train. I realise why my other dogs don’t have good waits, it’s because I’m too lazy to train them properly.

The current big thing is Rio does not like being left on her own, she’s always been a bit of a temper-tantrum puppy about being left alone whilst we go into the other room, but it’s usually just a bit of grumping before she settles down in her crate. Apparently being left whilst we leave the house for 40mins equals full-on screaming temper tantrum. We know this because we didn’t actually leave her alone, my sister was tucked away upstairs (unbeknownst to Rio, of course) on listening duty to see how long she screamed for. The whole time, apparently. We need to work on this, but I don’t really know how, I’ve never had a puppy do this before!

Busy Days

Posted on December 7, 2011 by Leanne

Having a quiet day today.

Rio had a very busy day yesterday, lots of socialisation boxes ticked. We drove over to Langsett Barn to see lovely Buzz, her fellow Aussie and still a big puppy at 8 months. They got on very well, and would have loved a run around together but Rio just isn’t big enough to go running around the forest with the big dogs yet. She also met several strange people, an adorable Labrador puppy, and a little Jack Russell. She’s very polite meeting other dogs, and getting increasingly good at meeting new people as well (it’s always been her weak point).

We had a quick stroll around the wood before we headed home, she was a little startled by a weird log but we clicker shaped it and she bounced all over it in minutes so I was very pleased with that.

She also visited agility training for the first time! Our agility arena is on a livery yard/smallholding, so lots of new experiences for her. We didn’t see any horses but she met the cows, plus a whole group of people and dogs of all sizes and attitudes. She was polite, took the hints where necessary, and really wanted to play with Diva.

Dylan worked very well at training, we did some weave exercises and then worked on some in/out box sequences. They were hard on me, I had to get my timing exactly right otherwise I’d send him off in the wrong direction. Much harder than it was with Kim!