8 Months!

My little puppy is 8 months old – gah, the time goes by so quickly! He’s most definitely not a tiny puppy anymore, he suddenly has sprouted this massive man-mane, which really surprised me. I think he’s going to have more coat than Navarre, which I didn’t think he would. He is starting to even look a little handsome and athletic occasionally instead of goofy and awkward all the time. Just thrilled with him, he has the most charming and sweet personality and such a biddable dog without any real softness or worry. Gets along wonderfully with my dogs and my cats, so much fun to train and is turning into a nice little herding dog. I just feel very fortunate he came into my life I continue to love the dog he’s turning into.

The whole litter continues to be LARGE, with his sister in CA near 40 pounds at 8 months and over 21 inches. These are SUBSTANTIAL dogs! Sister Flea remains tall very feminine and much more leggy than Asher. Asher may be taller than her at this point, he definitely had a growth spurt. I’d guess his weight around 40 pounds, he’s no lightweight. Brother Ravi seems taller but a little more leggy like Flea. They are all very athletic, sweet and fun dogs. And they don’t want to kill each other any more!

We had all three of the local pups together with Heidi and Dove for a family reunion at Poodletopia. I wasn’t sure how that was going to go. The pups hadn’t been together for a few months, and things had never gone smoothly even when we were hiking and keeping them moving with other things to distract them. Having all three just hanging out together at Heidi’s seemed a bit of recipe for disaster, but they proved they have finally grown past their littermate squabbles (mostly!).

The pups did great together and had so much fun. It was just amazing to watch the three pups and Dove run around in a big pack. While they all definitely look different, watching them move together there was no question they were related. And it was interesting to watch how Dove reacted to them, which was, well, like their mom. She pretty much acted the same as she did when they were 8 weeks old, which is mostly just watching them run around together with an air of relaxed maturity. But also she would get in there and play with the pups, and occasionally tell them to knock it off, but mostly just supervised or encouraged appropriate play. It was adorable, they were all thrilled to see her, to see Heidi and to see each other. Really, really fun to see them together, and so pleased that they are actually friends now. I would not have guessed that when they were younger, they took quite some time to get over the puppy feelings. I hope we can continue to get them together, they all definitely speak the same language.

Asher graduated to the arena in herding. Though less from ability and more from the fact that Ian’s round pen was quickly turning into a muddy mess so it would be really helpful if he didn’t have to use it. So it was nice to know he can handle the arena, and I was thrilled with what he was doing. He was trying hard for me in the round pen and worked great for Ian with the arena. With a rattle bottle he was staying behind the sheep and not being a pushy maniac with Ian in the arena. I really do think he’s going to be so much easier in herding, he so wants to be right. I am looking forward to having a dog that enjoy working with that we have the time and ability to train all the things. You know, eventually. We have a nice start so far, and that feels good. And he remains very gentle on the sheep, which I find interesting.

Navarre and Ian continue to look good and Navarre is just so much more relaxed and cooperative these days. And as I have no immediate plans to work with him, it’s super relaxing for me. Haku continues to work on shedding, it’s good practice for me and Haku enjoys it. He’s got the basic idea, still working on me getting a nice hole where I feel confident he’ll actually come through. And at least one pair of my waterproof pants are not as waterproof as I thought. Winter has arrived.

As for agility, I introduced Asher to a low jump bar, just to get him understanding how to wrap with a bar as well. OMG, that took forever to get him past the idea that I really didn’t want him to stomp all over the bar! It will be an ongoing project, apparently, but once he had the basic concept he CAN do multiwraps with an 4 inch bar … sometimes. I think it made a bit more sense when we did some wraps in sequence with low bars, but he is not one Nature’s Jumpers.

I wouldn’t say Asher is a particularly gifted athlete in general. He’s just kind of an overly enthusiastic awkward klutz, though he has a lot of try, it does not come natural for him. Now, in terms of ranking, London was by far the least athletic puppy I’ve ever raised. He couldn’t even run in the woods until he was almost grown, he would just trip over everything – and he couldn’t even jump on the bed until he was like 7 months old. Haku is definitely more of a natural athlete, but he’s held back by his structure and depth perception. Bright is freakishly aware of where her body is, and always has. I could do so many things with her from a young age because she could do it, and she could do it safely as she never threw her body around. Navarre could jump and climb and balance like no one’s business from day one, all of the body awareness and conditioning exercises were so simple for him. And then there’s Asher … he’s definitely not London, but he’s definitely not a natural, and definitely not careful.

I did more body awareness and specific conditioning training with Navarre as a puppy than any other dog before, I often wondered if that’s what made him seem so easy with that kind of thing. Uh, no. Asher has done a ton as well, but you can put him on a balance donut and he can still barely balance up there because he’s just not being thoughtful about what he’s doing. I definitely proved we have more work to do with balancing this week, sheesh.

Anyway, so, jumping with Asher. I’m not sure if the right answer is to just wait for him to get older, or work with him now so he can start learning the baby jumping skills that he will need to build on when he gets older. All I wanted to do was introduce jumping as a body awareness exercise, multiwraps with a bar, they have to really think about what they’re doing. Which he most definitely does NOT. OMG, so many knocked bars, it’s like he has no idea he HAS a rear. We had to really break the behavior down, starting with just throwing food from one side to the other, no bending at all until he could actually start clearing the 4 inch bar occasionally so I could actually mark it. Then I gradually started throwing at more an angle until we could sometimes do just a back and forth bend. But, still, no real comprehension that his job is to actually not hit the bar. I tried a bit higher bar, that just made it worse. So, yeah, that was so way harder than I would have anticipated, and it’s still an ongoing project.

I did go ahead and introduce some low bars in sequence, where he does actually do better as I think it makes more ‘sense’, and that helped his basic foundation exercises … a little. Agility got much less fun after the bar was introduced, but I want to at least get to a point where he understands what the point of bars is. He doesn’t need to be doing any actual ‘jumping’ at this point, but I thought we could work on the concept that ‘bars are for jumping’ and start to introduce some little 4 inch sequences for him to be introduced to the concept of jumps and striding. We may have to put it away though. Which I’m on the fence about whether that will just make it worse down the road if we don’t address it now when he’s still younge. Hm.

Winter has finally arrived with a big storm this week so I did take the dogs to the soon to be gone Poodle Barn to get some exercise in. I introduced Asher to some basic collection vs extension exercises and he caught on quickly. We also tried just little bit of putting three jumps together in a sequence and it was a total disaster – OMG, he just shot out into the atmosphere. So that was kind of funny, that is not usually the issue that baby dogs have, but when your 8 month old puppy just launches into orbit in the first sequence you ever try and doesn’t want to come into you, I think that gives you a pretty good idea of what kind of challenges we will be facing in the future. Once again, I remember Bright could do a ridiculous amount of things at a young age because she was so tight and easy. Asher is apparently … not. But fun, he’s always having a lot of fun. I didn’t expect him to actually do anything, we haven’t trained it! But him just launching into a huge outrun was kind of amusing. I don’t think he’ll be easy in agility, but, yes, fun. As long as he’s not taking out every jump along the way …

A little video, because he’s not been a very documented puppy video-wise. Some basic figure 8 wing work and our introduction to extension collection lines at the arena:

We really haven’t been working on much, and I think that shows in that he’s been more destructive around the house and in the yard. He’s a dog that needs mental work and I was kind of taking a break because we had kind of gotten past that baby stage where they need EVERYTHING, so it was nice NOT to train anything new for a while.

I have a bunch of projects that I’m saving for winter break, which is right around the corner. Hard to believe that 2019 has gone by so quickly! I think having a puppy is so time consuming I don’t remember doing much else other than puppies, puppies, puppies all year long. We’ll see what adventures 2020, possibly some big changes around here, which I think we’re ready for … we shall see.

I do think I need to make entering trials with the dogs a priority this year. I had hoped to have a little incentive like nationals to give me something to shoot for, but, really, the reason I do agility is because I love agility. Bright is getting up there, now is the time to do everything she wants to do – and she loves her agility. Running at 16 in a blast with her and we have our partnership down. I’m even okay if she wants to freelance, as she most definitely does these days. No big goals other than celebrate with my best girl as much as I can. We will still probably stick to one day trials, but considering how few we did this year, it won’t take much to top that. She’s 8 and a half and ready to roll, now’s the time.

Navarre is also grown up, he’ll be FIVE next year, which means he really should be bringing it together by then. We haven’t been working on our agility partnership this year though, and you can’t improve without practice. So I’d like to get our shit together in 2020, he’s ready, we just need mileage and getting out there. As we mostly only have AKC trials locally, I’d like to think he could get his MACH this year. I can’t remember how many double Qs he has, but mostly it comes down to actually showing enough to feel consistent and to actually have a chance to finish that off. If we trialed enough, he would do it. He will also definitely continue with herding, as it makes him very happy. I had originally thought I might do a Winter of Herding with him this year, but I’m going to stick with other people working him. It doesn’t make me sad at all, and I don’t think he minds either! We may at some point look at finishing his Open obedience title again, but I also think neither one of us is enjoying it overly much, and that’s really the reason you should do anything with your dog. So, we’ll see. Definitely not a priority!

Haku – my boy, my heart! He’s getting older – faster than I’d like. He’s still doing well, but I do worry and he definitely feels much ‘older’ than he did this time last year. Last year we were doing our Winter of Herding – it was so much fun! I’m glad we did it, it was the best winter of his life. He continues to herd, and will continue to do so, but no big goals for him. He may even go up with Carol to some AKC trials again next Spring, we’ll see. He’s definitely getting more opinionated and nuttier. I can’t have him out when I train other dogs or just spins up and starts biting the other dogs feet. And, oh, the barking! What is it about old dogs getting so NAUGHTY? I think because I lost London so young I do worry about Haku and something happening to him. I think every old dog should live until at least 15, but I also know that may not be realistic. OMG, 15 year old Haku is going to be so obnoxious! I can see him in my mind, he’s going to be arthritic as hell, but still thinking he’s invincible, and he’ll just bark all the time because he can’t hear and doesn’t care – as he stalks cats all over the house all day long. God I love that dog.

And Asher in 2020 will have a very full year of all the fun things baby dogs get to do! He’ll get to grow up and start to learn REAL agility! We’ll train running contacts and weaves and learn how to sequence without shooting halfway across the arena. I love training baby dog things! Hopefully we’ll continue to progress with herding, I’d like to think I’ll be able to do things with him that I never could with Haku and Navarre. And he’ll get to grow up and show me how big he’s really going to get, we’ll enter some seminars and see if he can keep his shit together around other dogs.  So many things!

Bring on 2020, we’re ready …