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Puppy update

November 20, 2008 in Pictures, Tricks

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.

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Squid just turned 9 weeks

November 18, 2008 in Pictures

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

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Welcome Squid!

November 11, 2008 in Pictures, Videos

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 :D 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:

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Squid, 6 weeks

October 27, 2008 in Pictures

Only two weeks left! This was Squid yesterday:


Tugging with her sister


Biting her sister :D


With me

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Update

October 11, 2008 in Agility, Obedience, Pictures

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

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Puppy picture

October 2, 2008 in Pictures

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

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Squid, six days old

September 20, 2008 in Pictures

One of them will be mine in seven weeks…

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Back chaining the stairs

May 28, 2008 in Agility, Pictures

We’re still having nice, warm weather and have been able to work outdoors a lot. We were out on the training field for hours on monday, dogs relaxing in their crates when they weren’t working. We did jump grids with Pavlov, Missy and Shejpa and Pi got to do some set point exercises in the Salo spider. She looked great and seems to have more confidence in jumping now. We also did some one jump exercises for the first time, just building value for one jump. She did good, but I wish she could be a little less thoughtful and just go :)

I have been training a lot of contacts the last days, especially with Shejpa. She was so good yesterday that I’m really looking forward to getting our contact equipment. I moved the stairs to a new piece of grass and she was perfect from the first repetition. She does all her nose touching without a target and I have backchained the stairs, but I don’t always let her drive down the whole set. It depends on what other challenges I give her. I work on different body positions for me and on different distractions. I found out that she’s really good at most things, but that I almost never have started her when I’m in front, so I’ll have to work on that.

Here are some nice pictures from Pi’s first birthday:

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Shejpa and I

May 20, 2008 in Agility, Pictures

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Got my happy dog back

May 14, 2008 in Agility, Pictures

I’ve had an intense weekend with two days of teaching at home and then two days in Bergen (on the west coast of Norway). I flew home yesterday and have been pretty tired since I got home. The dogs are not tired at all (even though Nina has done a great job keeping them busy while I was away) and we have done some training today already. Pi is finally her self again after being in heat for the first time, wich really made her tired and easily distracted. I gave her most of last week off and now she’s back to normal (and our male dogs have started to calm down around her).

We also started to teach Nina’s kelpie Agera to weave today. The plan is to do 3 x 3 minutes of weaving every day for the two next weeks. Agera did 1 + 3 minutes this morning and caught on very fast. We couldn’t get her to fail once, but we didn’t do very hard things since it was her first time. When we planned the next session we made sure that we gave her more challenging entries and sure enough, she failed. And as I had thought, when she failed once, she had a hard time changing and being right again. She failed many times but did not stop trying and finally got it right. We finished with some easy ones and because of all the thinking and failing involved, the session was 13 minutes long. I hope that we can see her get that same, challenging entry tonight. We’re videotaping everything and I might show a clip tonight.

It was very obvious that it’s a great advantage to have a dog that is familiar with the one jump exercises when you start with the weaving (2x2s). Agera was sure of what to do right from the start!

Nina and Agera

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