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Puppy update

Squid has started to be more offensive in shaping, wich I love. She started offering so many cool things when she got frustrated, that I decided to just have sessions where I capture and shape her puppy goofiness. I know it might make other things harder for me, because I have clicked for different things in one session (without me being in charge of switching behaviors), something I very rarely do. I want my dogs to keep working on the same thing until I decide to do something new. But on the other hand, I got some really cool behaviors and Squid is working much more activly. She likes to lie down, something that I have never reinforced before, but now decided to accept as she is offering so many cool things. She has offered and repeated:

  • Hind paw on face
  • Crossing front legs
  • Rolling over
  • Putting front paw over nose
  • Streching front legs

We have also been working on getting up with front paws on a small perch and holding a toy in her mouth when I tempt her with treats. She has been on a few walks with the older dogs out on the fields (no herding the older dogs yet, so she can join us for now) and we have been working on circle work on the agility field.

Squid with our german pointer Pax

Squid with Pi and Missy (can you believe they are both border collies?)

Pi, flying over the fields

On Monday, we brought her to some friends and family with small children. She med Kaja, 5 month old human puppy, and Benjamin, Thomas’ 8 months old nephew. She was really sweet with the babies and was really happy to see them. We also got to walk in the city at night.

Squid and Kaja

Squid wants to share toys with Kaja

We’re getting ready for an agility trial tomorrow. Shejpa hasn’t been in a trial since her debut in September and I really, really hope we’ll do well tomorrow. It’s indoors on carpet and that should suite her fine.

Squid just turned 9 weeks

Squid turned 9 weeks yesterday and it has been a week filled with joy since I got her. She is a very confident and fearless puppy. She’s been to many different locations in the past week, for example shopping malls, vet, parks, city centre, stable, airport, woods and on a bus. Nothing seems to make her worried and she loves all people that she greets.

At the airport

In her bag at the airport

She flew with us to Stavanger this weekend. I’m happy to be able to introduce her to flying while she still can ride in the cabin with us. She was absolutely perfect. We did some socializing and training at the airport and she didn’t mind any of the distractions there, she even tugged her way through the line for security. While flying, she slept all the time both ways in her bag under the seat in front of me. She didn’t say a thing. We were teaching in Stavanger and I had her close to me all the time. She slept in the bag at my chest while I was walking around and instructing. She got to show the first steps in crate games and perch work for the first time. She quickly caught on and she is now eagerly playing crate games.

Teaching with me

Teaching with me in Stavanger

Shaping was initially a bit slow with her. She would lie down a lot and sometimes even fell asleep. That is nog big problem any more, she might lay down, but she will soon get up and start working again. Her backing up is starting to look really good. We also work on loose leash walking and stopping at my side when I stop. She seems to get it, because she would run to me and sit at my side instead of coming into front when I had my back to her at puppy class tonight. We do a lot of restrained recalls and work on not crossing behind my back. I will start doing more circle work now that she is doing her loose leash walking well without crossing behind.

Playing with a boxer puppy friend

Welcome Squid!

She’s finally home and she’s an absolutely wonderful puppy! I picked her up this weekend. She is very cuddly and pretty calm. She tugs like crazy and loves food. I’ve never had a puppy that acts so much like a puppy, she is not as mature as the puppies that I have had in the past. I think that’s a good thing. I get time to bond with her before she starts to stalk other dogs, chase cars and act like a teenager. On the other hand, she is not the fastest learner when it comes to shaping, because of her immaturity. She tends to fall asleep in my lap instead of trying harder 😀 I’m sure she’ll be excellent before long.

We’ve done a lot of socialising since I got her. We’ve met a lot of people, quite a few dogs and a lot of children. We’ve been to the vet, to the mall, to the pet store, watched traffic, ridden an elevator, walked in the woods, watched herding, been in three homes… All in four days. I can’t wait to get some more training done with her! She is such a lovely puppy.

Playing with children
Greeting another dog in the pet store
Trying out toys at the pet store
Training at the vets
First day!

And finally: A video from our first day:

Update

I should write in this blog more often. There are so many things that I have worked on since last time I wrote here.

Obedience
I havn’t done a lot of obedience training with Pi since our trial in May, but now I have decided to get ready for the next obedience level with her and I hope that we’ll be ready for a trial in four weeks, but that is really optimistic… I need to teach her send to square (10 meters straight ahead and then stop in the square), recall with stand, sit/down/sit/down at a distance, jump away from me and some other things. But she is a fast learner and maybe we’ll be ready to do a trial in November.

Shadow Handling
Both Missy and Shejpa has been working on a lot of shadow handling in the past week. For Shejpa, I have cut out all treats and I only use tug as a reward. That creates new challenges in our shadow handling, but that’s where I need to start if I want her to turn tight and respond quickly on equipment. Rewardning her with only tugging is a challenge, but I’ve been at this point using treats too and I know we’ll get better. She is already making good progress. With Missy, I realised the importance of shadow handling when I incorporated it into our training on turning tight over one jump. We’ve been working on it a lot, but progress has been really slow with both dogs. But when I put the circle work into that with Missy, she finally found a reason to dig in and turn tight over the jump. It was so cool. For her, using more high value treats (chicken necks!) and not just tugging, also has a good effect.

Running dogwalks
Shejpas dogwalk was really bad on Thursday (under new and challenging circumstances) and I realised that much of the value that she found in the dogwalk has gone away. She used to get really happy getting on the dowalk, but now it was just like any other obstacle. I think running it a lot in sequences, training turns but not going straight and mostly, just not training a lot, made that happend. I don’t think I should obsess so much about the turning. Both dogs turn pretty good if i decel smoothly. It annoys me that they don’t really get the concept of turning, but maybe it’s a thing they will grow into. It only took a few repetitions of running straight and throwing the toy to get Shejpa to love her dogwalk and hit the contact reliably.

Puppies
Puppies are four weeks old this weekend. Here are some pictures from last weekend

Puppy picture

I got a picture from the breederon Saturday. The puppies are two weeks old. This is female one and two and number two is really looking like she’ll be very red in the face. I really like that, even though the white on her head isn’t symmetrical.

Puppies, 2 weeks old

Home, Sweet Home

I’m finally back to som kind of normal life at home. I spent 39 days away from home (and most of the time, also away from my dogs) during August and September. It’s a lot of fun to travel and do exciting things, but it feels so good to be at home again. World Championships were great. It was definatly more exciting this year than Hamar last year. There are lots of videos from worlds in my YouTube channel. It’s also very inspiring to see agility at the highest level and I have to control myself and not train my dogs too much now. When I got home from worlds on Sunday, I decided to not give Shejpa any more treats in training. No treats until she is tugging like crazy and can work for just toys. I thought it would be a frustrating and slow process, but it worked right away! She was of course very keen on training when I got back, she hadn’t done any agility for three weeks. What’s even better is that she seems to get more and more intense and crazy about tugging for every session we do. And what’s even more surprising, is that she is much better at bringing the toy back to me now. I would have thought that that would be one of the hardest things to accomplish without food rewards. This is really cool and I just hope that she will keep this crazy, fast and focused attitude.

Missy is just crazy. We havn’t done a lot of training lately and you can really tell. She won’t drop the toy when I tell her and she tries to bite my pants when we do circle work… I really need to work her a lot more. Both dogs did a distance grid this week and Missy has made enormous progress with her jumping. I could get her really high and then run my fastest right beside her, and she was still perfect! Here nose touches are coming along and I hope to get her on the seesaw pretty soon. We also need to to a lot of work on getting that check stride for turning tight (with both dogs…) and more double box.

I havn’t been working Pi that much lately, but she was with me when we did a seminar in Sweden two weeks ago and she got to show a lot of things and learned a lt of new stuff. I started teaching her the movements for distant control in obedience. I want her to down and stand without moving any feet. We’ve hade some sessions at home, and this is what our training looked like yesterday:

Video from world cup practice

I’ve spent the whole day watching all the teams practice one last time before world championships start tomorrow. I have three favourites, one in each height. The best small dog I’ve seen today is the Russian sheltie called Adrenalina. I always get so happy watching that dog, it’s so amazingly fast. It might be turning a bit wide, but I really hope they do well this weekend. My favourite medium dog is a blue merle border collie from England. A really nice, fast, tight turning dog that has a good chance of winning if all goes well. In the big dog division, Susan Garrett and Encore were just outstanding. A great combination of speed, tight turns and amazing skills. A lot of big dogs look fast and great, but Encore was just in a class of her own, I think.

The Norwegian team looked really good in practice. They have speed and pretty good consistency. I think some of them could do well. I’ve made a video with short clips from todays training, mostly Sweden, England, USA, Switzerland and Canada. I ran out of batteries after the Canadian team, so unfortunatly no Norway or Russia.

Missy’s dogwalk

Before I went to Helsinki yesterday, I made a video of Missy’s running dogwalk. We havn’t been training dogwalks for a month, but when I get back home, I’ll start the “real” training. I also timed it and it’s pretty consistent at 1.25s when she’s going straight.

It’s been a hectic month and I have hardly been at home at all. We went away for two weeks after the trial, hunting and teaching, and a friend of mine stayed at our place and took care of my dogs. They were fine, but I think Shejpa really missed me. Missy just ran out the door to say hi to Thomas when I opened it to say hi to her when we got home. I look forward to having more time at home in october (even though I have three weekends of teaching away from home) and I look forward to visiting the puppies again.